


In Courts of Living Stone

by ncfan



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Child Abuse, Cultural Identity, Doriath, Doubt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fear, First Age, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Horror, Identity, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Magic, Supernatural Elements, Worldbuilding, disturbing imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-07 12:57:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13435200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: Maeglin and Aredhel never flee Nan Elmoth for Gondolin. Twenty years later, Maeglin finds himself in Menegroth on a mission for his mother, seeking another road to freedom. But he is unprepared for what awaits him there. AU.





	1. Chapter One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As far as canon goes, I’m pretty sure that Maeglin would be denied entry into Doriath, since probably all “of the kin of Thingol” means is that Eöl is a Telerin Elf. But for the purposes of this AU, I’m taking “of the kin of Thingol” to be more literal than that, and that Maeglin, like the Arafinwëans, is allowed access into Doriath because he’s kin to Thingol through one of his parents.

_“No, we must be cautious.” Her eyes still flashed with pride, bright as the stars on a winter’s night, and her voice still thrummed with frustration, but she sat heavily in her chair, weaving her hand into her hair. “It cannot be now.”_

_That, truthfully, was the_ last _thing Maeglin had expected to hear. He stared down at his mother, for many moments too stunned to offer protest. When finally he found his voice again, he let out a strangled_ “Why?”

_Aredhel offered no explanation, instead looking to the door as if she expected to find it thrown open and his father standing there, watching them out of hooded eyes. She leapt out of her chair and strode to the door, checking the lock while Maeglin looked on in increasing confusion and dismay._

_“Mother,_ why _?” he asked, and shied away from the plaintive bent of his thoughts, but too late to keep it from seeping into his voice. “The Hadhodrim’s feasts go on for so long, and it takes days to reach Nogrod—all the longer since Father won’t travel under Anor, and the summer nights are short.” She seemed unmoved, and Maeglin went on, just a touch desperately, “He’ll be gone for_ weeks _; by the time he returns, we could be far from this place, where he’d never find us. Mother,_ please _.”_

_He couldn’t do it without her. It was Lady Aredhel, not her young son, who knew the secret paths to the Hidden City. She had never been willing to share that secret with him, and Maeglin could not tease the secret from her (guarded, now that she had discovered what he was capable of) mind. Maeglin could spend decades scouring Beleriand, and he would never find Gondolin, for he knew not where to look._

_There were other places he could go—to his grandfather, to his other uncle, to his mother’s myriad cousins. Himlad and Estolad were both, perhaps, too close to Nan Elmoth for comfort, but even the other places Maeglin could potentially go to would be closed to him if he went there alone. It was only Lady Aredhel would could vouch that Maeglin was her son. To the rest, he would at best be the child of one of Elu Thingol’s kinsmen, and at worst would be some unknown child who claimed kinship to them without proof. To Celegorm and Curufin, he was merely the son of Eöl, their regular antagonist and the latter’s rival for the business and friendship of the Hadhodrim; without his mother, he had nothing to recommend himself. There was nowhere he could go, unless his mother guided him there._

_“I never have taught you how to hunt, have I?” Aredhel asked unexpectedly, her mouth twitching in the beginnings of a smile. “You’re too small yet to hunt boar, but I suppose I could have at least taught you how to hunt deer or set traps for rabbits.”_

_Maeglin blinked in blank confusion, wondering where this train of conversation had come from._

_His silence was taken as invitation to go on. Aredhel pressed a hand to his shoulder, gave it a gentle squeeze. “A hunter must be patient when stalking her prey. She must be able to judge the best time to strike, and when to hold back and wait.” She grimaced. “I haven’t exercised patience as I ought to have in the past, and I may not be the best choice to teach it to you. But I have a hunter’s judgment, still, and the time for us to leave has not arrived yet.”_

_“Mother—“_

_“Lómion,” she said gently, and he fell silent, swallowing on a knot that had formed suddenly in his throat. How long had it been since she had last called him by the name she had given him? He’d not heard that name spoken to him in years. His father had grown too watchful. “I—“ her voice hardened “—don’t wish to spend another day here, no more than you do. We will leave, one day. For now,” she told him, a somewhat grim smile on her face, “I will teach you a hunter’s kind of patience.”_

-0-0-0-

As a young child, Maeglin had had it from his father that the enchantments he set to safeguard Nan Elmoth’s borders were modeled off of the Girdle of Melian. Melian the Queen, great and wise, was of the same race as the remote, terrible Rodyn, far greater in power than the lord of Nan Elmoth, but Nan Elmoth was nothing to the size of Region, Neldoreth and Nivrim. Eöl could cast his enchantments over Nan Elmoth, and render intruders just as lost and adrift as intruders into Doriath.

(He had tried, once, asking his father how the enchantments worked, what was needed to set them, and how they could be broken. Watchful Eöl had been from the start, but mentioning ‘breaking’ had been a fatal error. Unsmiling, Eöl had gestured with outstretched hand for Maeglin to return inside. Maeglin was half-grown, then—just beginning to chafe, and unaccustomed to pressing a point his father had so clearly indicated he didn’t wish to be pressed. He went back inside.)

Maeglin had never had the opportunity to compare the barrier around Nan Elmoth with that of the great forests of Doriath. As his father did not allow him to wander Beleriand at will, neither had he ever taken his son to any of the great strongholds of the Eldar. They had even avoided the scattered communities of the Laegrim in Ossiriand, when it had still pleased Eöl to take his son with him to Nogrod. An Edhel so solitary in nature as Eöl had little desire for the company of others, beyond his family and his household.

He was, in fact, so solitary that when an invitation came from Doriath every spring, he invariably turned it down, or at least he had for as long as Maeglin could remember. Every year, at the beginning of spring, there was a great festival in Menegroth, lasting several days (Or so Maeglin had once learned from the messenger, when he asked her). The festival celebrated the end of winter and the flowering of the world into spring. Given how joyful his mother was when the snows finally melted, Maeglin could gather that there were many who felt the coming of spring was something worth celebrating. His father, however, preferred to keep to his own halls rather than make the journey to Menegroth.

He had preferred to keep to his own halls. This year, to Maeglin’s shock, he accepted the invitation instead. And there was another shock to come.

Maeglin stared searchingly at his father’s face, saying nothing. The urge to ask for an explanation was nearly overwhelming, but he fought it down and instead stared in silence.

“Nothing to say?” Eöl raised an eyebrow. He handed a note off to the messenger, who nodded and left the room. “Considering how apt you are to wander, I had thought that this would please you.”

To that, Maeglin frowned, pulling the words apart in his mind, trying to find any hint or seed of suspicion there. “I… I was just surprised,” he said carefully. “I’d not thought you cared for Menegroth.” And he had never thought that his father would allow him to be among other Edhil, outside the shadowed eaves of Nan Elmoth. He had thought that that day would only arrive if he escaped, or if by chance his father died. The threat to put him in bonds, though many years past and never repeated, since Aredhel had succeeded in persuading Maeglin to be silent, had hardly been forgotten. It still surfaced in his mind at odd moments, at mealtimes and in the forge, when his father would stretch out his hand and ask Maeglin to hand him a tool that had been placed out of his reach.

(It had been more difficult than he could have imagined, stamping down on the impulse to leave and the impulse to push back against the trammeled bounds of his life, to argue when his father continued to enforce edicts that were, at best, unreasonable. Why shouldn’t he and his mother be free to go where they wished? Why shouldn’t they be free to visit their kin, their flesh and blood?

Aredhel taught him a hunter’s kind of patience, just as she had said she would. When Eöl asked her what they were doing out in the forest, “ _Hunting_ ,” she would brightly say, ease only partially feigned, for it was true enough. She taught him how to make traps and set them, how to chase deer on horseback and stalk prey on foot without being detected. But she taught him other things as well. These lessons had been hard-learned when she had learned them, and were just as onerous to her son, but he had learned.)

Eöl considered him for a long moment, perhaps pulling Maeglin’s words apart just as Maeglin had rent his, before giving an answer. “You’re old enough, now.” His voice carried no inflection beyond a thin, rootless irritation as he went on, “Menegroth has grown too crowded for comfort, but it would be best that its children know of you, if ever you are in need. We leave after nightfall in two days. Don’t leave your packing to the last moment.”

“I… won’t, Father.”

Later, when they were alone, his mother took him aside and pressed a piece of paper bound shut with white yarn into his hands. “Keep this hidden,” she told him tautly, her star-bright, silvery-blue eyes boring into his face. “Do not let your father find it.” She clutched his forearm in a tight grip. “Do you understand?”

Maeglin’s brow furrowed. “Yes, Mother. What is it?”

Aredhel’s face was hard and set. “I have taught you a hunter’s kind of patience, a hunter’s way of determining timing. Our time has come at last; we’re certainly not going to have an opportunity like this handed to us again, not for a long time.” Maeglin’s heart leapt, but before he could say anything, she went on, “My cousin, Artanis—no, she goes by Galadriel, now, she lives in Menegroth. She will likely be there when you arrive. You must find a way to deliver this letter to her without alerting your father.

“It is possible that Galadriel will be abroad in Nargothrond during this festival. If so, it is also possible that her brothers, my cousins Finrod, Angrod, Aegnor and Orodreth will be there, or Orodreth’s daughter, Finduilas; if she is absent and any of them present, give my letter to one of them, instead. Failing all else, Galadriel’s husband, Celeborn, never goes abroad from Doriath; at least, that is what I have heard. If you give the letter to him and tell him that it is intended for his wife, he will give it to her when she returns.”

Maeglin turned the paper over in his hands, feeling slightly as though all the air had gone out of his lungs. He didn’t dare ask whether the letter was written in Sindarin or in Quenya. “What does it say?” he heard himself asking instead.

Aredhel shook her head choppily. “It’s best you don’t know. Will you do as I ask?”

“Of course!” His voice sounded too harsh to his own ears, so Maeglin said earnestly, more softly, “I can do it, Mother.”

She smiled, some of the tension easing out of her face. “I know you can. You’ve always been brave.”

Maeglin hadn’t felt particularly brave these past twenty years. Bravery was for his mother, who had proceeded down the paths of Nan Dungortheb even after being unable to find her companions, even after her first clash with Ungoliant’s fell children. Bravery was for his grandfather, who had led the Exiles across the Helcaraxë, determined to reach Ennor in spite of the peril he would face. Bravery was for his uncles and his mother’s cousins, who had rode into battle time and again to protect Beleriand from the forces of their great Enemy. Not for someone who skulked in a dark forest and bit his tongue to keep silent his protests of his captivity. But he could be brave now. He could certainly be brave now.

-0-0-0-

The forest was shrouded with silver mist when they left. No wind sang in the trees and the dense snares of undergrowth. Maeglin saw no deer or rabbits; he couldn’t even hear the last calls of the songbirds, or the first, shrill cries of the white-faced ghost owls emerging from their shadowed nests on the edge of the forest to hunt. Instead, gray silence clung to all.

Eöl rode on without looking back, slowing only to navigate areas difficult for the horses to walk through, but Maeglin looked back. Aredhel had stood outside the entrance to the hall, watching them go. One last look; that was all he wanted. But all Maeglin could see was mist. The letter, tucked under his shirt, pressed against his chest like a leaden weight.

The barriers of Nan Elmoth, permeable though they might have been, were no more eager to let Maeglin leave than they ever were. They clung to him like vines, wrapping their feelers around his chest and his neck. Whispers teased his ears, just a little too low for the words to be made out; countless eyes watched him from out of sight, never seen, always felt. Even after all this time, it was, though no longer alarming, not something Maeglin was comfortable with. He licked his lips, nostrils flaring, and resisted the impulse to urge his (equally discomfited) horse to a gallop. His father was proceeding calmly enough. The thick air, the scent of copper that rose from the earth at the eaves of Nan Elmoth, it did not seem to bother him at all.

They emerged from the borders of Nan Elmoth under clouded night, Maeglin sucking in a deep breath of clear air with something approaching relief. The wet chill in the air sank straight into his bones, but he felt as though he could breathe here, and breathing free air was worth the cold. He searched the sky with eager eyes, trying to discern any hint of the stars behind the dark veil of cloud, and lamenting the fact that he could see nothing of Ithil but a suggestion of silver light. It was so rarely that he had the chance to look up at the night sky, unobscured by branches and leaves. He drew the hood of his cloak down onto his shoulders for a better look at the sky.

“If we ride quickly,” his father was saying, “we can reach Region before daybreak and make camp on the bank of the Aros.” His hands shot out; he yanked Maeglin’s hood back over his head with a short snarl, and grabbed Maeglin’s shoulder with his other hand. “And keep your hood up!” he snapped. “The sky may be clouded, but we are still out in the open; we do not have darkness as a shelter.”

Maeglin gritted his teeth, but nodded, forcing himself not to flinch away from Eöl’s hands. “Forgive me,” he said quietly. “I was… distracted.”

This route, the southwest road into Doriath, was not one that Maeglin had ever traveled. It had been well nigh twenty-five years since he had last gone abroad from Nan Elmoth, but the only road he had ever traveled at his father’s side was the southeastern road over the Gelion to Nogrod and Belegost. He saw new spring grass and rocks and gently rolling hills, but could make out no features more distinctive than that. The pace his father set did not allow for close scrutiny of his surroundings, and though Maeglin’s eyes might have been sharp, there was only so much even he could make out on a clouded night. His father had been born in darkness, without either Ithil or Anor, or even many of the stars in the sky. His father had grown to adulthood in a world where the brightest light came from bonfires or the fires from the clashes between the Rodyn and their Enemy, far to the north. His eyes were by far the more discerning, when it came to darkness.

They reached the Celon (a different part of the Celon, slower and wider than what flowed by the western border of Nan Elmoth, so different that Maeglin scarcely recognized its watery voice until the spray shot up and hit his face) in the dead of night. The wind was starting to pick up, humming in the shivering grass. The great forest of Region loomed across the waters of the Celon, and faintly, so faintly, Maeglin heard voices singing.

There were no bridges over the Celon. “Doriath’s borders will be impenetrable for as long as Melian the Queen dwells in its forests,” Eöl explained, “but there is no reason to make it easier for intruders to cross into the forest. You’ll recall there is no bridge over the Celon where it borders our home. There are no ferries here, but there is a good place to ford the river around half a mile from here. Follow me closely.” He didn’t explain how he could pick out exactly where that place in the middle of lightless night, but Maeglin did not question it.

As they crossed the river, Maeglin was torn between two impulses. The water lapped around his feet; his horse tossed his head, whinnying nervously. Though he knew the water wouldn’t come up so high, he found himself having to latch his hands tighter and tighter on the reins to keep from reaching for the letter tucked under his shirt, for fear that it would get wet in the crossing. Second, the sound of singing was growing louder and louder, mesmerizing voices in a language Maeglin had never heard before. Concentrating on fording the river seemed less concerning with every passing second, as the song filled his ears and rang in his blood.

When they reached the opposite bank of the Celon, Eöl took the reins of Maeglin’s horse in his hand. “We’ve entered the Girdle,” he warned him. Eöl frowned at him, his brow deeply furrowed. “You are kin to Thingol; it will not lead you astray, not with intent. But it is still your first time here, and the Girdle can be… overwhelming. Do not stray from my side.”

The Girdle of Melian was like the enchantments at the edges of Nan Elmoth, and yet not like. Maeglin did not feel eyes on him wherever he went, nor did he feel as though his clothing and exposed skin was being plucked at and tugged upon and _grabbed_ by unseen hands. The only thing the earth smelled of was loam and new grass and dead leaves, not copper.

A multitude of voices rose up in song, formless and infinite and untiring, cascading upon each other like the clamoring echoes in the great forges of Nogrod. No matter how Maeglin strained his ears, he could not understand what those voices were singing. They spoke not Iathrim Sindarin as was spoken in Nan Elmoth. They spoke not the Mithrim Sindarin his mother had greater ease with, nor the Quenya she had taught him in secret and taught him to hold close to his heart. Not Khuzdul, nor Nandorin, nor even the nameless tongue he had heard his father speak from time to time. It was like nothing Maeglin had ever heard.

The song reverberated in his bones, making the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end. His skin prickled; his pulse picked up, throbbing at his wrists and throat. When he breathed out, his breath echoed with the voices that lifted up all around them in song. All thought of moving past fled from Maeglin’s mind; he instead strained to hear all the varied tunes and melodies, searching for any trace of something that sounded like a language he could understand.

Stayed there he might have, until he starved, had his father not kept his hand on the reins of Maeglin’s horse and led it on. “As I said,” he murmured, “the Girdle can be overwhelming, the first time you enter it.”

Maeglin blinked blank abstraction out of his eyes, something like disappointment striking in his throat as the air cleared and grew silent. “Very,” he said quietly.

“Imagine if you were one of the Golodhrim.” Eöl bared his teeth in something akin to a smile. “The Girdle is a snare from which few of them ever escape. You would wander and wander until your horse collapsed and you died from thirst and hunger. Thingol’s blood protects you.”

Something snaked hot and tight in Maeglin’s chest, wrapping around his heart and lungs. With some difficulty, he nodded, and followed after his father, deeper into Region.

The trees of Nan Elmoth were tall and dark, forming a dense canopy that, at most times of the year, almost completely blotted out the sunlight. Even in winter was it so, for many of the trees were pines that did not lose their needles to the cold, and the branches of naked trees were thick and snarled like a tangled skein. Moreover, the days were short and clouded, the nights long and deep. Gloom reigned over Nan Elmoth at all times of year, gray and brown and green and deep.

Not so in Doriath, at least not in Region. True to its name, it was populated primarily by holly trees, some tall as any oak or pine in Nan Elmoth, some scarcely taller than Maeglin himself. Their green leaves gleamed wetly in the early morning light, sparkling with dew. Sunlight lanced through branches and leaves in golden shafts, touching Maeglin’s skin with a watery kind of warmth. Snowy white niphredil grew by the holly trees’ slender trunks, their petals reaching up towards the sky. Maeglin smiled slightly. The only place flowers ever grew in Nan Elmoth was near the edges of the forest, the only places where there was light enough for them to do anything but wither away, and they were bound up with thorns and rough vines.

His father was not nearly as enamored of his surroundings. Eöl drew the hood of his cloak so far over his head that of his face, only his mouth and chin were visible. He tossed his head and growled lowly. “Be careful to keep your hood up. We’ve not much cover here.”

“Yes, Father.”

Thy followed a narrow, winding path—honestly, more likely to be a deer track than a path, for how uneven it was—through the hollies, until this holly forest began to see a smattering of beech and yew and spruce and black alder. There were slender trees whose name Maeglin did not know, but were decked with delicate white flowers that quivered in the chilly breeze. Under taller trees, Eöl relaxed a little, but still pressed on at a brisk pace, whispering to his horse.

They forded the Aros and rested for a few hours, the horses taking the opportunity to graze on the sweet grass growing by the riverbank. Maeglin was stiff and sore from all the time he had spent in the saddle, but sleep was elusive.

He had never been to Menegroth before. Moreover, he had no idea what it was like. It didn’t feature in any of his mother’s stories. _Couldn’t_ feature; Aredhel was an Exile, and an Exile with no kinship to Thingol to soften his judgment against her. His father never spoke of it; Eöl had never told Maeglin any tales of the world outside Nan Elmoth that gave much in the way of descriptions. To earn a name like the Thousand Caves, Thingol’s halls must be massive, but Maeglin could guess no more than that.

Eöl seemed to be sleeping, lying on the ground with his back turned to Maeglin. Still, when Maeglin found his hand straying to his shirt collar, he let it fall. He couldn’t risk it. Not with his father right there. _I hope we will be given separate rooms in Menegroth. If not, matters will be even more difficult_.

All that was required of him was to deliver his mother’s letter to the Lady Galadriel, or if she was not present, one of her brothers, or her niece, or her husband. Just that, without his father knowing. It sounded simple, but he knew that it wasn’t. Things were rarely simple, when his father was involved.

_Will I even find enough time alone to—_

_I will. I said that I would. I must._

-0-0-0-

Not much longer would it be before Maeglin had a chance to judge Menegroth for himself. Past the Aros, Region became a forest ever more mixed. It was still predominantly composed of holly trees, but in addition to the beech and yew and spruce and black alder, and the white-flowered trees (that one of the Edhil they had met on the road told Maeglin were cherry trees), there were ash and elm and flowering rowan trees, and a few sprawling oaks. They had ridden off the deer track and onto an actual road, and ramsons and yellow primrose flowered on the sides of the road.

There were a few scattered villages close to the road and just off of it, some Sindar and some Laegrim. They did not stop there long, only for Eöl to speak briefly with Edhil he had known when he still lived in Doriath. This Eöl likely consented to only because the trees provided more cover here, the sunlight dappling the ground rather than striking it in shafts, or at least Maeglin suspected it was so. Asides from that, they pressed on, and though Eöl was somewhat more relaxed under the treetops of Doriath than he had been on the open plains of Estolad, he urged his horse on at a sharp pace.

The sky was bleeding red and golden when they neared Menegroth. Since there was no entryway into Menegroth east of the Esgalduin (or, by Eöl, the only entryway open to visitors, rather than to scouts and marchwardens), they found themselves crossing a third river. The Esgalduin was wider and deeper than either the Celon or the Aros, but here there was a ferry to transport them across, so fording the river would be (thankfully; Maeglin didn’t think they could ford the river without being completely soaked) unnecessary. And on the western bank of the Esgalduin, at the foot of the great bridge, Maeglin had his first sight of Menegroth.

Though a substantial part of the halls of Nan Elmoth were underground, the greater part was above. The halls were not carved out of a natural cave system, as was Menegroth; Eöl had told Maeglin that much. And yet, what of Menegroth was above ground dwarfed the aboveground halls of Nan Elmoth in size, rising high above the treetops, even the soaring pines. Maeglin had seen it from afar, but not realized what it was until he drew close.

As they passed over the stone bridge wide and strong towards the gates thrown open, Maeglin stared up at the entrance into Menegroth, his eyes wide.

One three sides, it resembled nothing so much as a simple, massive, grassy hill, crowned with holly trees and niphredil. But on the side that Maeglin approached, it was something else entirely. The massive gates were carved of stone, with beech trees with their branches intertwined carved into the doors. Maeglin found himself wondering how quickly those gates could be closed in the event of a siege; each of the doors were so massive that it must surely have taken several Edhil just to close one. _They trust to the power of Melian the Queen to protect them. So long as her power rules over Doriath, there will be no need to close these doors._

Five guards stood on either side of the entrance into Menegroth, still and silent and bearing spears with tips that glittered like ice in the dimming light. A massive stable greeted them upon their passing beyond the gates. When Maeglin and Eöl handed their horses over to the care of the grooms, Eöl directed Maeglin towards a massive staircase.

At the top of the staircase, Eöl clutched at Maeglin’s upper arm, fixing him in a piercing stare. “We are in the halls of Thingol now, my son. Remember who you are.”

Maeglin nodded wordlessly. At that, Eöl’s grip on his arm relaxed, and he led him down, down down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *’Ghost owl’ is a common name for the barn owl.
> 
> Glossary of Terms:
> 
>  **Anor** —the Sindarin name for the Sun  
>  **Aros** —a south-flowing river in East Beleriand that had its origin in the Pass of Aglon. It served as the border between Dor Dínen and Himlad, bordered the Forest of Region in Doriath, and emptied into the River Sirion.  
>  **Celon** —a slender tributary of Aros that had its origins in the hills around Himring, and flowed southwest until it emptied into Aros. It was the western border of Nan Elmoth, and also served as the boundary between Himlad and Estolad.  
>  **Edhel** — Elf (plural: Edhil) (Sindarin)  
>  **Eldar** —‘People of the Stars’ (Quenya); a name first given to the Elves by Oromë when he found them by Cuiviénen, but later came to refer only to those who answered the summons to Aman and set out on the March, with those who chose to remain by Cuiviénen coming to be known as the Avari; the Eldar were composed of these groups: the Vanyar, Ñoldor (those among them who chose to go to Aman), and the Teleri (including their divisions: the Lindar, Falmari, Sindar and Nandor).  
>  **Ennor** —Middle-Earth (Sindarin)  
>  **Esgalduin** —literally ‘River under shade’ (Sindarin); a tributary of the River Sirion, which originated in the Shadowy Spring in Ered Gorgoroth and flowed southward to empty into the Sirion; marked the borders between the Forests of Region and Neldoreth.  
>  **Gelion** —a south-flowing river in East Beleriand that had two sources: Himring, via Little Gelion, and Mount Rerir, via Greater Gelion. It was twice the length of Sirion, but was narrower and shallower, since it rained more in west Beleriand than in the east. Gelion was the western border of Ossiriand, and was fed by Ascar (later Rathlóriel), Thalos, Legolin, Brilthor, Duilwen, and Adurant. Gelion ultimately emptied into the Belegaer.  
>  **Golodhrim** —a name for the Ñoldor given to them by the Sindar (singular: Golodh) (Sindarin).  
>  **Hadhodrim** —a Sindarin name for the Dwarves, ultimately adapted from the Khuzdul Khazâd (singular: Hadhod) (Sindarin)  
>  **Helcaraxë** —the Grinding Ice (Quenya); the bridge of ice between Araman and Middle-Earth in the far north of the world. Morgoth and Ungoliant escaped to Middle-Earth by this road after destroying the Two Trees. Later, after the burning of the ships at Losgar, the Ñoldorin exiles abandoned on the other side of the sea traveled to Middle-Earth by this road at great risk to themselves.  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath  
>  **Ithil** —the Sindarin name for the Moon; of the Sun and the Moon, it is the elder of the two vessels, lit by Telperion’s last flower; in an early version of ‘Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor’ was said to be “the giver of visions” ( _The Lost Road_ 264). As this form is very similar to ‘Isil’, the Quenya form (which is likely to be its original form, as the vessel of the Moon was made in Aman), it is likely that ‘Ithil’ was adapted from ‘Isil’; all I can suppose is that the Valar got in contact with Melian at some point during the First Age to share information.  
>  **Laegrim** —the Green-Elves of Ossiriand (singular: Laegel) (plural: Laegil; Laegrim is class-plural term); the division of the Nandor who followed Denethor, son of Lenwë; the name was imposed upon them by the Sindar, because of the lush forests of their land, because of their especial love for the forests and waters of their land, and because the Laegrim often dressed in green as camouflage  
>  **Niphredil** —‘Little pallor’ (Sindarin); a white flower that bloomed first in Doriath when Lúthien was born. It also grew in Lothlórien, on Cerin Amroth. In appearance it was similar to a snowdrop.  
>  **Rodyn** — Valar (singular: Rodon) (Sindarin): a common Sindarin name for the Valar


	2. Chapter Two

As they descended, Maeglin took a sharp breath, craning his neck to get a better look at his surroundings. Menegroth had been carved from a natural cave system, but it was no bare, rough stone, no dirty hole in the ground. Everywhere there were pillars of stone, some carved in the likeness of beech trees, lamps which shone with golden light dangling from stone branches. Some were cylindrical pillars decorated with stone vines and stone flowers so delicately carved that if you did not peer too closely at them, you could believe that living vines had been cultivated under the earth, and that living flowers blossomed upon them. Still more depicted animals running up and down the pillars, dogs and deer and boars and birds.

The walls were hung with tapestries of rich, vibrant hues. Some depicted mountains, or forests, or rivers, or what Maeglin suspected was the ocean. Some showed Edhil in great feats of heroism, and many showed what Maeglin recognized immediately as the Two Trees of Valinor, golden Laurelin and silver Telperion in the days of their life, before darkness descended over the Undying Lands, before the birth of Ithil and Anor. Maeglin’s stomach churned as he looked at them, something hard and heavy lodging in his chest.

Yet more lanterns hung from the walls, glowing golden. Maeglin heard babbling water and soft, sweet birdsong. The ceiling glittered with mica, and the floor was inlaid with tiles of painted stone, black and white and violet, polished so highly that Maeglin could see the dim image of his face staring back at him, nothing like the plain, rough-hewn floors of his home.

Maeglin was so engrossed in drinking in his surroundings that he did not at first realize that he and his father were not alone. Only when Eöl pressed his hand gently to Maeglin’s shoulder did Maeglin realize that there were Edhil all around them, walking down hallways and disappearing behind doors, some stopping to eye the newcomers with apparent interest. Maeglin found himself drawing back on impulse, ducking his head to avoid eye contact.

There were so many. The halls of Nan Elmoth were home to himself, his parents, and a few quiet servants. But here, there were so many Edhil all around; the walls sang their voices back to them. He couldn’t make the echoes out. Spoken in perfect Iathrim Sindarin, but still indecipherable, distorted into foreign shapes. Maeglin drew a deep, shuddering breath. He’d not thought there would be so many Edhil here, in spite of everything. Not thought there would be so many to see him and judge him.

“Maeglin, my son.” Maeglin’s eyes snapped to his father’s face. More jarring than the realization that there were Edhil all around him was the sight of Eöl smiling down at him, if only faintly. “This place is strange; I know. The festival begins the day after tomorrow, and itself only lasts for three. We will return home as soon as it is over.”

No, he didn’t understand, didn’t understand him at all. It shouldn’t have bothered Maeglin, especially not under the circumstances, but still he found a protest beating uselessly against the roof of his mouth. He found himself coming close to leaning into his father’s side as well, until he remembered all the reasons why he shouldn’t. When he was disordered, it was too easy to forget. Maeglin forced himself to stand straight with his head level, imitating his father’s posture and imagining how his mother would have met all these strangers’ eyes squarely, no matter what shame was heaped upon her shoulders.

After what felt like both an eternity and an instant, they entered into the court of Thingol. As they moved through what was practically a sea of courtiers to approach the dais where the king and queen waited, Maeglin stared through the other Edhil as though they were made of smoke, trying as he did so to calm his pounding heart. There would be time enough to search the crowd for Galadriel’s face after he had been introduced.

Afterwards, Maeglin had no memory of what Thingol had said to him, or what he had said to Thingol. For all that he was a great king among the Eldar, noble and wise, he was just an Edhel. A tall one certainly, hugely tall, towering over Maeglin and his father both, but an Edhel. The look on his otherwise somewhat stern face was a warm one as he greeted a friend he had not seen in centuries, and that friend’s son. There was light in his gray eyes that Maeglin thought reminiscent of his mother’s, the light of the Lechind, but somehow different. Instead of a reflection of light, it was like a reflection of a reflection. As for what it reflected, the answer lied in the woman standing to Thingol’s right.

Thingol might have dwarfed Maeglin and Eöl in height, but Melian the Queen was taller still, noticeably taller than he. She seemed to glow with light from some fire burning beneath her skin, something that blazed bright and yet gave off no heat. She flickered a little when she moved, like a strong candle flame confronted by a breeze. There were flowering branches with crimson blossoms woven into her pitch black hair, one on either side of her head, giving the appearance of horns. Her eyes shone impossibly bright, so bright they almost hurt to look at, as if the Flame Imperishable was caught within them.

“Well met, child,” she said, in a voice that rippled and shimmered and crackled with power. The hairs on the back of Maeglin’s neck stood on end. It was the same voice he had heard when he entered the Girdle—a thousand voices, and one. He tried to look into her eyes, but could not long endure, and turned his eyes away.

As they turned, Maeglin set himself to searching the sea of faces for anyone who might match his mother’s description of Galadriel. Mercifully, he had not long to look; he caught sight of her standing near a side doorway into the throne room, easily distinguished by her gold-and-silver hair. She was engrossed in conversation with a woman with bright gold hair, smaller and slighter than she, but with a resemblance that marked her as kin. Finduilas, perhaps. Once, when he and his father were waylaid on their way back from Nogrod, Maeglin had (when his father wasn’t in earshot) prevailed upon Celebrimbor to describe some of their shared, though Celebrimbor might not know that, kin to him. This woman did seem to match the description Celebrimbor had given of Finduilas—tall, golden-haired as were all the House of Arfin, and fair to look upon.

Perhaps he had stared for too long. Galadriel looked up, and immediately locked eyes with him. Perhaps-Finduilas turned round to look as well, but Maeglin hardly noticed. Galadriel’s face was smooth and expressionless, but her eyes were, even at a distance, so piercing as to feel like nothing quite so much as knives peeling back the flesh of Maeglin’s skull, to lay bare what was in his mind.

Well. If she could do that, then perhaps all this would be a little bit easier. Still, Maeglin jerked his head away, and followed after Eöl.

-0-0-0-

The next day saw Maeglin sitting on the ledge of one of the windows in one of the workshops in Menegroth, staring down into an open courtyard around twenty feet below.

Menegroth was a veritable rabbit warren of branching halls and passageways; in the short time Maeglin had been here, he suspected he had already walked several miles, and that without ever walking back out into the outside world. He and his father had walked through two market squares to get from their apartment (a shared apartment, though mercifully they had been given an apartment with two bedchambers rather than one) to this workshop, and both of those markets had been larger than the aboveground portion of the hall in Nan Elmoth. Periodically, a hallway would spill out into empty space, a railed veranda overlooking a courtyard one or two or three stories down. Even now, Maeglin found himself staring over the ledge to one of those courtyards, two stories below him.

Not that Maeglin had seen as much of Menegroth as he would have liked. Perhaps because of mistrust, perhaps because of a simple fear that his son would become lost in such a labyrinthine city, Eöl had demanded that Maeglin stay by his side and not explore on his own. Now, as Eöl conversed with the Edhil who ran the workshop, Maeglin was left to his own devices, but though he might have been absorbed in conversation, Maeglin knew he would be caught if he tried to go elsewhere.

Maeglin was not foolish enough to believe that he could pass Aredhel’s letter to Galadriel in the dining hall or on the dance floor without his father noticing. Eöl might have named his son ‘Sharp Glance,’ but it was Eöl who always seemed to know just what Maeglin was doing, not the other way around. If he tried to pass the letter along while his father was in the same room as him, he would be caught out—he knew he would. And when that happened, he—

No. He would not think of that. He could not think of that. Not here, not now, not when freedom was so close that he could almost reach out and grasp it.

He would have to wait for an opportunity to seek Galadriel out when he was not under his father’s supervision. _It would go better if I had any idea where her apartments are located, or any way to ask without drawing attention to myself_. It was not such a simple thing to pluck the knowledge from a passerby’s mind—there was no guarantee that they themselves would know, and every chance that they would be able to detect the intrusion. Besides, the tumult of voices had last night become so overwhelming that Maeglin had slammed shut the doors of his mind. He did not like to think of what he would feel if he was to open them again.

(Did not like to think of what others might see, if there were any here who had the power to look inside through shuttered windows and the cracks in the doors.)

The only guess Maeglin could make was that Galadriel’s apartments were possibly somewhere nearby his and his father’s own. They had been given rooms far down the rabbit warren of intertwining halls and passageways, near to the throne room. Surely a courtier who spent most of the year in Menegroth would be housed similarly. He would just have to wait for the right moment, when he could slip his father’s watch without springing any kind of hunters’ traps.

Maeglin turned his gaze away from the courtyard below long enough to see what his father was doing. Eöl showed no signs of being ready to leave. He was holding a spear up so that the steel tip was at eye level. A few students were gathered around, listening to all he told them with rapt attention. Maeglin couldn’t make any of it out. The workshop was a large one, his father was not standing close by, and as was his wont, Eöl spoke in a low, quiet voice.

The courtyard was a happier sight to look upon, anyways. Maeglin could see entry points from three sides, and suspected there was one directly below him as well. A staircase directly opposite from where he was sitting rose all the way to the highest floor, winding like a corkscrew. In the center of the courtyard there was a fountain, silver gray and sparkling in the lantern light. Water coursed down its many lips and bowls and flutes to a basin that glimmered like a sheet of beaten silver. The floor was made of large, rust-red tiles with four-petalled flowers painted over them in a light, sharp blue. Four large benches were set up diagonally near the corners of the courtyard, and in front of each entryway there were holly trees fashioned from silver, emerald, and carnelian. When Maeglin looked to them long enough, the emerald leaves seemed to rustle in some non-existent breeze, though he knew that was impossible.

 _“And in the court of Gondolin, out among the fountains there are Glingal and Belthil. Your uncle fashioned them out of gold and silver wire, in memory of Laurelin and Telperion. He was determined to do it by himself; he wouldn’t even let me help him, no matter how difficult it became to finish the work._ ”

She had spoken all this in Quenya, when Maeglin was yet young enough that he could only understand it all by watching the images that rose to the forefront of her unguarded mind. Out in the forest, out under the trees, where there was no one to watch them; she could never have told that story inside, not in Quenya. She could never tell it here, not as an Exile, and not in Quenya. He found himself wondering if he would ever see those gold and silver trees with his own eyes, and what his mother would have thought of this place, if ever she had been allowed to see it for herself. If these people knew the words he’d spoken to himself in his heart, what tongue they were spoken in…

The courtyard had been empty when Maeglin first looked down upon it, but not for much longer would it remain so. Several Edhil entered the courtyard from the entryway off to Maeglin’s right. After determining that Galadriel wasn’t among their number, he didn’t devote himself to any close inspection, but he still saw several dark-haired heads, some silver, and one gold.

High-pitched shrieks of laughter rose up to the ceiling, breeding thousands of echoes that came back down in a great din. It grew so deafening that Maeglin began to consider slipping back inside the workshop, even if it would mean exposing himself to greater scrutiny, when suddenly one of the Edhil below looked up, staring right at him.

“Hello!” Finduilas, or, at least, the woman who might be Finduilas, cried cheerily.

With something approaching abject confusion, Maeglin opened his mouth, but could do nothing but let it sit open, since no words would come to him. If this was Finduilas, then she was one of the Edhil he had been advised to seek out in the event that he couldn’t reach Galadriel. Finduilas was someone to him, but he was no one to her. Eöl had always been very strict about not speaking of Aredhel or Maeglin’s connection to the House of Finwë outside of Nan Elmoth. They were only distant kin through his father. He was no one to her.

She didn’t wait for him to speak. “I’ll come up to you!” she called, picking up her layered, floaty silken skirts in her hand as she traversed the winding staircase. Perplexed, he watched her, wondering why on earth she would want to speak with him so badly as to be willing to climb a staircase to get to him. She hurried across the veranda, adjusting as she did so the gauzy stole that had been slipping from her shoulders.

“Hello again,” she said when she reached him, a bright smile unfurling over her mouth. She had a smooth, sweet voice, clear and high, that was pleasant to listen to. Maeglin almost forgot his confusion in anticipation of hearing her speak again. “I don’t believe we’ve met. Is this your first time at court?”

She also, Maeglin noticed, though she spoke Iathrim Sindarin perfectly, without mispronouncing a single word or tripping over a syllable, had a touch of an accent. It was less pronounced than it was in his mother’s mouth, or Curufin’s, or any of the Exiles who had been born in the Undying Lands, but it was the same as theirs. A sense of things not quite fitting in the mouth, as though something else ought to be there instead. Maeglin felt almost uncomfortably light as he nodded. “…I am Maeglin, of Nan Elmoth.”

She smiled politely, but with nothing that he could readily identify as recognition. No, she would not recognize his name, nor consider it significant. They never spoke of Aredhel outside of Nan Elmoth. “I thought so. And Eöl is your father?” She looked past Maeglin into the workshop, and quirked an eyebrow. “The man currently demonstrating how to throw a spear properly?”

Maeglin craned his neck to get a look, and sure enough, that was what his father was doing, holding the spear aloft and lecturing the students on the proper posture to use when throwing a spear or a javelin. His dark eyes were bright, his usually grim face unusually animated. Maeglin’s brow creased as he watched him. The last time he had seen his father look that way… It had been a long time ago. He had been a child then, much younger, and Eöl had still taken joy in teaching his child. “Yes, he is.”

She made a soft humming noise in the back of her throat, her light gray eyes suddenly pensive. “I am Finduilas of Nargothrond. I suppose that makes us kin to one another, through our fathers.”

Maeglin tried not to imagine what his father would say if someone was to remind him that he was related by blood to the House of Finwë, let alone by a member of the House of Finwë herself. Unease was awoken by that remark, _“through our fathers,”_ but he pushed it down. “Distant kin, Princess,” he demurred.

It _was_ her, though. If he couldn’t get through to Galadriel, then perhaps she could…

_“Kin through our fathers.”_

Maeglin tried not to feel cold.

“But kin, nonetheless.” The look on her face was a warm one, in spite of the sudden chill in the air. “There’s no need to stand on formality, Maeglin. I think you’ll find that our family doesn’t use titles with one another. Only the king and queen.”

“You _know_ them,” Maeglin pointed out dubiously, tilting his head slightly.

“I suppose that helps,” Finduilas conceded. She took one end of her gauzy stole, black with golden birds printed on the fabric, and tucked it over her opposite shoulder, making the stole shimmer in the lantern light. “If you would rather wait for the others’ input, I can hardly fault that. _I_ don’t mind it, though, to dispense with titles.”

This did little to put Maeglin at ease. He was, instead, suddenly intensely aware of the fact that while Finduilas was standing, he had remained seated on the window ledge. His face burning, he rose swiftly to his feet, curling his hand around one of the smooth, slender pillars holding the roof of the veranda aloft. Maeglin was looking down at her now, rather than up, but now looking at her was a little like staring at snowfall in the early morning, before anyone had trod upon it—fair, pristine, and if you did not wish to sully it, something you should turn away from, and put out of your sight.

 _Or,_ a cold, quiet voice whispered to him, _perhaps the trouble is that you do not wish her to look upon you. You do not want her to_ see _you, any more than you want anyone here to see you. But is that really possible? How can you keep it all hidden away?_

“I… if you wish it.”

“I have heard that the Edhil of Nan Elmoth rarely travel to other parts of Beleriand.” Unaware of any of the thoughts that had passed Maeglin’s mind, Finduilas tilted her head to get a better look at his face. Her gold hair, hanging loose about her shoulders, caught the light and shone. “Is that true?”

“Yes.” His mother did not travel, but not by choice. He did not travel, but not by choice. “My father journeys to the mansions of the Hadhodrim, but otherwise, he does not venture from Nan Elmoth’s borders.” Once, Maeglin had been allowed to accompany his father to the mansions of the Hadhodrim. Once, he had spent weeks and months at a time there, learning smithcraft from them just as his father had when he was young. But all that had come to a screeching halt when Maeglin had expressed aloud the desire to better know his kin, and be known to them as their blood. After that, he had not ventured forth from the eaves of Nan Elmoth again, until now.

Finduilas narrowed her eyes slightly, staring ever more intently at Maeglin’s face. “If you have ever accompanied your father to the Ered Luin, you may have met a kinsman of mine on the road to or back.”

There was something of a prompt in those words, and Maeglin could well guess what Finduilas wished supplied. “Curufin.”

“Yes.” She tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ears, a softly, slightly shaky laugh escaping her lips. “I understand he and your father don’t care much for each other. I am sorry if he has ever given you any trouble.”

Truthfully, on the occasions that Curufin waylaid Eöl when Maeglin was with him, Curufin had paid his long-time adversary’s child little mind. He fixed him in some very sharp, long stares sometimes, especially as Maeglin grew older, but he never had anything to say to him. It was Celebrimbor, if he was present, who spoke to Maeglin. Eöl and Curufin danced their white-lipped, tight-faced, coldly polite dance, and all the while, Maeglin was increasingly tempted to blurt out “ _I am your cousin_ ” to Celebrimbor with each year that passed.

“Not much.” It wasn’t a lie. Not truly.

This time, when Finduilas gave a small, soft laugh, it was steady. “I wonder why they dislike each other so. There doesn’t seem to be a reason for it.”

“I couldn’t tell you,” Maeglin replied. He knew why his father hated the Ñoldor, but had no idea why his father had chosen to find the traits he hated them for abhorrent (Had no idea how he could treat his wife as an exception, and then turn to their son and insist that he was no Ñoldo). He had some idea of why Eöl and Curufin hated each other, but he did not know when that hatred had sprouted, or what exactly it was that had breathed life into it.

Finduilas shook her head. “I suppose we may never know.” Her eyes brightened. No Lechind light; something gentler, something it didn’t hurt to look at. “But if that is the only place you’ve ever visited, then this must really be your first stay in Menegroth. What do you think of it?”

There were more Edhil here than Maeglin had ever seen in his life, so many pressing voices that Maeglin had slammed shut the doors of his mind, and had no intention of opening them again until he was away from this place. He had not had a moment’s true silence since he arrived. If it wasn’t Edhil’s voices, it was flowing water or birdsong, things that would not be unnatural, except that Maeglin had never known to listen for either so far underground, and thus they became unnatural, something that could shake him at a moment’s notice. “It’s beautiful here.” It was much cleaner here than it was in the halls of Nan Elmoth, with many more lanterns. Where they gloomed, Menegroth shone. The halls of Menegroth were appointed in a way Maeglin had never thought he would experience outside of his mother’s stories. Finduilas smiled at him. “Even the mansions of the Hadhodrim do not compare.”

Finduilas looked down, an almost wistful look stealing over her face, before it was gone in a flash, as if it had never been there at all. “I first came here as a child,” she said, "and I had lived in Nargothrond before that. I cannot imagine what it must be like to see all of this for the first time as an adult, without having first seen anything comparable.”

“It is… wondrous.”

He wondered if she had ever been unsettled here. Somehow, he doubted it.

“Well…” Finduilas’s mouth curled in a smile once more. “I hope you enjoy your stay here. I am afraid I cannot stay, but we should have the opportunity to speak more soon.”

“I…” Maeglin stared at her, blinking rapidly, before he nodded. “…Yes. …Thank you.”

She likely meant the events of the festival, feasts and dancing and such. Yes, there would be opportunity to speak then, and if he could not reach Galadriel, at least there was someone else in Menegroth his mother had thought it safe to entrust her letter to. ( _“Kin through our fathers_ ” came to mind again, refusing to be banished as easily as it had been before. Maeglin licked his lips, drawing a short, shuddering breath.) Still, when she had said that they would have the opportunity to speak to one another again, he had gotten the impression that she hadn’t meant in the dining hall, or on the dance floor. Perhaps Maeglin was wrong, but that hadn’t sounded like what she meant.

It was something to think about.

As Finduilas descended back down the stairs, Maeglin’s gaze followed after her, his eyes drawn by the way she shone in the lantern light.

Finduilas disappeared through one of the entryways to the courtyard, the one off to Maeglin’s left, her long skirts flaring out behind her. The Edhil who had accompanied her stayed behind, seemingly uncaring of their companion’s departure. A child who was with the group leapt up on the narrow rim of the fountain basin and began trying to balance on it, walking around the rim one foot after another, arms stretched out like wings. Around the time the child lost their balance and fell with a splash into the water, Maeglin felt eyes boring into the back of his head.

He did not turn round. He did not greet his father, nor acknowledge his presence. Instead, he waited. Not an especially good idea, perhaps—even with the doors of his mind shut, Maeglin could easily sense the disapprobation radiating off of his father. But he did not trust himself to turn round. Whatever disorder was in his mind, it would have kept him from schooling his face to neutrality.

It was several moments before his father spoke—perhaps waiting for Maeglin to turn to face him, perhaps considering what he himself would say. “The Golodh princess…” His voice was measured, quiet. If one was not listening closely, one could have thought he sounded calm, but when Maeglin took that tone apart in his mind, he found the thread of tension at the core. “…Why did you speak with her?”

“It would have been uncivil not to speak with her, after she approached me.” He had been caught off-guard.

“And what did you tell her?”

“Very little.” There was very little Maeglin could tell anyone, with Eöl standing so close by.

“Good.” Eöl’s hand clamped down on Maeglin’s shoulder, as unyielding as if of stone. “We are far from home, but far from home it is even more important that you remember who you are.”

The edges of the letter he bore pricked Maeglin’s skin, not sharp enough to bleed, but enough. Just… enough. Maeglin looked back at his father, his face cast in something not quite blank, but close enough, and said evenly, “I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary of Terms:
> 
>  **Anor** —the Sindarin name for the Sun  
>  **Belthil** —‘Divine Radiance’ (Sindarin); a metal tree located in the courts of Turgon in Gondolin, wrought by Turgon himself. It was created to be an image and reminder of Telperion, and possessed silver flowers. It is said that the light that filled this tree and its mate, Glingal, filled all the roads of the city.  
>  **Edhel** — Elf (plural: Edhil) (Sindarin)  
>  **Eldar** —‘People of the Stars’ (Quenya); a name first given to the Elves by Oromë when he found them by Cuiviénen, but later came to refer only to those who answered the summons to Aman and set out on the March, with those who chose to remain by Cuiviénen coming to be known as the Avari; the Eldar were composed of these groups: the Vanyar, Ñoldor (those among them who chose to go to Aman), and the Teleri (including their divisions: the Lindar, Falmari, Sindar and Nandor).  
>  **Ered Luin** —“The Blue Mountains” (Sindarin); the mountain range at the far western border of Eriador, that in the Years of the Trees and the First Age served as the border between Eriador and Beleriand. It was also known as the Ered Lindon, the Mountains of the Land of the Singers, Lindon being a name given to the region of the Ossiriand by the Ñoldor, derived from the Nandorin Lindānā.  
>  **Glingal** —‘Hanging Flame’ (Sindarin); a metal tree made of gold located in the courts of Turgon in Gondolin, wrought by Turgon himself. It was created to be a reminder and an image of Laurelin, and bore gold flowers.  
>  **Golodhrim** —a name for the Ñoldor given to them by the Sindar (singular: Golodh) (Sindarin).  
>  **Hadhodrim** — a Sindarin name for the Dwarves, ultimately adapted from the Khuzdul Khazâd (singular: Hadhod) (Sindarin)  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath  
>  **Ithil** —the Sindarin name for the Moon; of the Sun and the Moon, it is the elder of the two vessels, lit by Telperion’s last flower; in an early version of ‘Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor’ was said to be “the giver of visions” ( _The Lost Road_ 264). As this form is very similar to ‘Isil’, the Quenya form (which is likely to be its original form, as the vessel of the Moon was made in Aman), it is likely that ‘Ithil’ was adapted from ‘Isil’; all I can suppose is that the Valar got in contact with Melian at some point during the First Age to share information.  
>  **Lechind** —'Flame-eyed'; a name given to the Ñoldor by the Sindar, referring to the light of the Trees that shined in the eyes of those Ñoldor born in Aman during the Years of the Trees (singular: Lachend) (Sindarin)


	3. Chapter Three

When Maeglin woke many hours later in the dead of night, he saw stars.

He stared up at the sky in abject confusion. There was a great host of stars overhead, sparkling like a net of jewels held fast in the inky blackness. How had he gotten outside? His heart began to beat unpleasantly against his ribcage. Had he been drugged? Surely he would have been able to taste it in his food or drink… but this was not home, and if the Iathrim of Menegroth had different drugs and potions, perhaps they would have drugs and potions that had no taste he could recognize.

If he had been drugged, though, why, and by whom? His father had no enemies in Menegroth that he knew of, and the power of the king and queen was great enough that it would have been at best foolhardy to attack one of their kinsmen, however distantly related Maeglin might be. His father… Maybe. He wasn’t certain as to _why_ , but maybe.

Maeglin pushed himself up on his elbows, wincing at how stiff he was. Determining who had drugged him and why wasn’t his greatest concern, not at the moment. Finding his way back to Menegroth before his father missed him (if, indeed, his father had not been the one to drug him and leave him out along under the sky) was.

The stars…

Maeglin frowned deeply as he stared up at the stars. His father had taught him the constellations when he was a child, those first few times they had traveled to Nogrod and Belegost. He could make out none of them here; indeed, the map of the stars was alien to what he had always known. And though the stars could be seen clearly and Ithil had been full just a few nights ago, there was no moonlight. Just stars, and utter darkness beyond them.

The air was still and silent.

Maeglin fell back on his bed, as a wave of red-hot embarrassment swept up him.

When they had arrived here the night before, there had been several hours between their arrival and their reaching their assigned rooms. By the time they made it here, Maeglin had been too exhausted to do anything but sleep. He hadn’t thought to examine the ceiling. When morning came, he and Eöl left these rooms, and spent nearly the entire day abroad in Menegroth, so there had been no opportunity then to notice this, either.

Was it mica, as he had seen glittering in other ceilings in Menegroth? No, not mica, Maeglin realized, as he studied the ‘stars’ more closely. Mica glittered in light, but there was no light here, and these stones did not just glitter—they _glowed_. They glowed, just brightly enough that Maeglin could, dimly, discern the outline of his bedside table. He reached wearily for the box of matches sitting out on the table, fumbling with tired, clumsy hands, before managing to ignite one, and lit the wick of the candle in his lamp.

Ignited, the lamp set Maeglin in a small pool of golden light, beyond the borders of which there was only shifting shadow. He thought to examine the ‘stars’ he had seen more closely—surely he would have a better idea of just what they were with more light—but when he looked up, they had vanished. Look to the ceiling, and all you would see was shadow. Maeglin bit back an uneven sigh, and wondered if, were he to venture out of the apartments now, all of the passageways would be different, and lead him to different places.

 _The hallways_ …

Suddenly wide awake, Maeglin scrambled off of the bed and groped under his pillow, praying that what he sought would still be there. In such a strange place, who knew what could happen while he was sleeping? He breathed a sigh of relief, his shoulders sagging, when his fingertips met with paper. It was still here. Relief was placed with a cold, jittery kind of determination. It was time to make a first attempt.

He dressed as quickly as he could without doing something that might have awoken his father, had him coming in here to see what the racket was all about. Maeglin tucked the letter under his shirt, and pressed the palm of his hand over his heart, where cloth and paper served as barriers between flesh. _I will not disappoint you._

When Maeglin stepped out into the hall, he found it utterly deserted, devoid of Edhil. There weren’t even the silent, staring guards he had seen at the gates. They were so far from the surface that it must have been thought unnecessary to have guards watch over this part of the city, even at night. Perhaps that was a good thing. If there were no guards whom Maeglin could ask for help in finding Galadriel’s apartments, there were also no guards who could report on his comings and goings. That had been a… a problem, sometimes, in Nan Elmoth.

The lamps were still lit, but they no longer gave off bright golden light as they did during the day. From their glass cases they gave off light blue and dim, flickering and flaring in unison, slowly, rhythmically, so that Maeglin could count _‘one, two, three,’_ between the moment the lamps guttered and the moment they flared, every time, without fail. As he ventured cautiously down the hallway, he felt a hot, soft breeze tickle the back of his neck. Maeglin spun on his heel and peered into the gloom, mashing his lips together. On the wall there were carved images of trees, bushes, flowering vines, and when he stared at them, they seemed almost to rustle, though he knew it was only so because of the way the lamps were flickering. For a moment, Maeglin thought he saw eyes staring out at him through the leaves.

As he walked on, slowly, careful to make as little noise as possible, the black-tiled floor, which glimmered like polished obsidian in the lamp light and had previously exuded cold, grew warm underfoot. Indeed, the more he walked, the less it felt like hard tile. Though it still had the appearance of such, it felt as though he was walking on springy turf instead, turf that _pulsated_ …

No.

Maeglin stopped dead in his tracks, gritting his teeth and clenching his hands into fists. Whatever he _thought_ he was feeling, he wasn’t. It was late at night, and he was tired. He was in a new place, a place that he had already found somewhat unnerving. He was acting in direct defiance of his father’s will, in a place full of his father’s kin. Surely these were reasons enough for the mind to start playing tricks.

(Telling himself that his mind was playing tricks did not make the sensations go away. Maeglin could only try to ignore them.)

When finally Maeglin was reasonably certain that he was far enough away from his lodgings that his father wouldn’t hear him, he stopped and stared at the doors around him, wondering which he should knock on first. Without knowing where Galadriel lived, and without anyone with the hallways with him whom he could ask, that seemed the only possible way he could discover where to find her.

It was the only way, and yet, Maeglin hesitated. _“Kin through our fathers.”_ Many of the Edhil here were kin to his father. They would be loyal to Eöl, whom they knew, long before they were loyal to Maeglin, who was a stranger to them. Why would anyone here be friendly to Maeglin, apart from the kinship they bore each other, through Eöl? (The pulse beneath his feet, which Maeglin had almost managed to block out, broke back into his awareness, incapable of being banished.) Maeglin’s presence in Menegroth was suffered only _because_ he was Eöl’s son. Who here beside Galadriel, who was closer in kinship to Aredhel than anyone, would be willing to help a Ñoldo, or her son?

How could he be certain that—

“Maeglin.”

At the sound of that voice, a sick, hot feeling settled uneasily in Maeglin’s stomach. Slowly, reluctantly, he turned round, to find his father glaring down at him, his mouth set in a thin, grim line. “Come with me now, Maeglin,” he hissed, his dark eyes flashing.

There was nothing Maeglin could do but follow; he’d been caught, by a predator too fast for any prey animal to have a chance of outrunning. He followed a few paces behind his father, his heart in his throat. _If he finds out about the letter, I’m done. We’re done._ A thin layer of sweat broke out on his forehead, his stomach churning so violently he thought he might be sick. The pulse he felt underfoot, though still steady, grew stronger and stronger, until Maeglin was at the door and wondering how the whole city wasn’t woken by it, how he could even walk without falling over. But when he stepped back into the antechamber of the apartments he shared with Eöl, the feeling abruptly vanished, and the floor was cold and hard and still again.

‘Stars’ glowed overhead, blue and white and golden, but they winked out as one when Eöl lit a candle and set it down in a lamp sitting on a low table. He glowered at Maeglin, first silent as he studied his son with visible ire and something that almost looked like caution etched into his face, though the latter was gone so quickly that Maeglin thought he might have imagined it. When at last he spoke, he said quietly, in a chilly voice that, while even, thrummed with tension, “I told you not to wander off alone.”

Maeglin looked away. “Forgive me,” he mumbled. “I was hungry.” Belatedly, he remembered how eagerly he had wolfed down his supper when, after nearly a full day of having eaten nothing at all, he had been confronted with an array of dishes more diverse than anything he had encountered outside the mansions of the Hadhodrim, baked with spices and marinades he had _never_ encountered. Much of it had been too rich or the spices too stranger for his liking, but he had tried small portions of nearly all of it. “I was looking for the kitchens.”

The doors of his mind were shut and locked—Maeglin knew from past experience that no matter how Eöl tried, he was unequal to the task of prying them open. Still, in spite of this, in spite of the fact that he didn’t even _try_ , Eöl still folded his arms across his chest and snorted derisively. “You are still in many ways your mother’s child, Maeglin. You love to wander, and—“ his gaze pinned Maeglin, stock-still, to the ground “—you are a poor liar.”

A thousand thoughts and one raced through Maeglin’s mind, but he didn’t dare give voice to any of them. He hardly dared to breathe. _He knows. Someone was listening at home and told him, or he pulled it from Mother’s mind, or he’s seen the letter._

“If you think it harmless to wander Menegroth alone at night, you are mistaken.”

Maeglin let out a breath, and tried not to let his face be too much of a mirror for his thoughts.

“And if you think that because any kin of yours here are kin to the Teleri, that leaves you free to seek them out without my consent, you are wrong.” Eöl’s mouth twisted in something akin to a smirk, hard-edged and humorless. “If you are approached by them, by all means, be ‘civil.’” The candle flared suddenly, casting his taut face in sharp relief. “But no more than that.” He pointed towards the door to Maeglin’s bedchamber. “Now, away with you. I’ve appointments to keep these next few days, and they’ll be easier to keep if I’m not spending my nights chasing after you.”

Once alone, Maeglin all but collapsed onto the edge of his bed, his legs suddenly feeling as though his bones were made of water. Taking in a deep, gasping breath (his lungs _screamed_ ), he stared down at his trembling hands, brow deeply furrowed. Eöl had half-guessed at his purpose, but his secret was safe, for now. He would have to find another way to reach Galadriel.

-0-0-0-

When Maeglin had gone with his father to attend feasts and festivals as guests of the Hadhodrim, he wouldn’t say that the noise had been overwhelming, nor even all that distracting. There was no one in the wide world who could claim to equal the Hadhodrim in stonemasonry. Their halls, even their smithies, were designed so that noise was not amplified, not unless they _wished_ for it to be amplified. Musicians had pits that they could play their music in, and if they played their music in these pits, then even in the most vast of chambers their music could be heard, even at the furthest edges, as if you were standing next to the pit itself.

How exactly they had accomplished that, Maeglin couldn’t claim to know. His mastery was with metals, and though he had learned something of stone from the Hadhodrim, it was nothing to the knowledge their masters possessed (He’d learned more of gemstones than rock and stone used for construction, anyways). What he did know was that the great feasting and festival halls of Menegroth had not been built to the same acoustic standards, not at all.

Admittedly, it had not been as bad the night before. The wine and liquor had not been so free-flowing, then, and the court had been somewhat quieter as they ate. Louder still than the Edhil of Nan Elmoth ever were, but quieter than tonight. And, admittedly, the noise was somewhat less overwhelming now than it had been earlier in the evening, when Maeglin was first confronted by it. But still, the din raised by the throng of revelers was enormous, and the way the ceiling was constructed served only to amplify the noise, taking it in and sending it back down to ground level, as though the living were matched in number by disembodied spirits invisible to the naked eye.

Maeglin thought he was at least faring better than his father. Eöl had not left his seat at the high table at the far back of the room, and though Maeglin was not standing close by, he could tell his father was fighting off a headache—there was little else hunched shoulders indicated with him, when outside of the forge. Why he didn’t just signal for Maeglin to come to him and then leave, Maeglin didn’t know. There was no rule that forbade them from leaving until the night’s festivities were done, and they had already paid their respects to Thingol and Melian. Perhaps he simply did not wish to be the first to leave.

Though Maeglin had at least made it to the dance floor, he had not progressed any further than that. He pressed his back against the clammy wall, trying to ignore the way the teeth and muzzle of the carven hound he was leaning against were digging into his spine. Trying to ignore the way his own breathing made it feel as though the dog itself was breathing.

The question of the hour was Maeglin asking himself if he could somehow get close enough to Galadriel to slip the letter into her hand. As he watched the way the dancers moved, it seemed more and more likely to him that he could cross paths with her eventually, no matter where he started from. But he didn’t know any of the Iathrim forms, and… No, it wouldn’t work. His father was watching the room like a hawk. If he didn’t see Maeglin slip the letter into Galadriel’s hand, he’d see Maeglin take the letter from the front of his shirt and surcoat. And what guarantee did Maeglin have that Lady Galadriel, great among both the Sindar and the Exiles, would not, upon receiving a letter from a stranger, who did not even give her an explanation as to who the letter was from wouldn’t simply discard it? The dance floor was _still_ not a good place to try to pass his mother’s letter along.

A reveler, so drunk that Maeglin could smell the wine on his breath, lost his balance and came dangerously close to colliding with Maeglin himself. One of the other dancers, at least marginally more sober, latched a hand onto the back of his companion’s shirt and pulled him upright. He apologized for the drunken man, but Maeglin scarcely heard. He was watching the crowd.

He picked Galadriel out near the center of the room. Her long hair was braided into ropes that glimmered in the lamp light as she spun round and round and round. She clasped the hand of a tall, silver-haired man that Maeglin thought might be her husband, Celeborn—he bore a marked resemblance to Thingol, though he was much shorter than him. He wondered how often, if ever, she thought of her cousin, who must be thought lost by her kin. He wondered, a bitter taste rising in the back of his mouth, if she had ever looked for his mother, after Aredhel disappeared from Himlad. Nan Elmoth was dark and deep and full of shadows and whispers. Even if she had looked, she’d likely have found nothing, but sometimes, Maeglin wondered, he really wondered…

Maeglin saw, rather than heard, Galadriel tip her head back and brightly laugh. He pressed his back ever more closely against the wall, intensely aware of stone teeth digging into his flesh, but unwilling to join the dancers. The dancers swirled and swayed in blurs of color and shrieks of laughter that ebbed and flowed like the waters of the Celon during one of the great storms that blew over Beleriand in summer. The walls shimmered, the carven images, birds and hounds and bears and boar all dancing, too. He took a breath to steady him but it did him little good. The walls were breathing, too.

A flash of gold caught his eye.

That flash of gold solidified into Finduilas, who was deftly weaving her way towards him through the throng of dancers. Her head was covered by a net of pearls that glistened like snow trapped in glass. When she reached him, Finduilas pressed her hand lightly to his forearm and asked, “Maeglin? Are you alright?”

At that, he straightened, stepping just far enough away from the wall that he could no longer feel teeth digging into his back. Embarrassment, hot and thick, shot through him at the idea that he had displayed his disorder so clearly, especially, he found, to her. “I am well, Princess.”

“It’s Finduilas,” she reminded him gently. “And you look like you’re in need of a dance partner.”

All of a sudden, Maeglin’s mind went completely, terrifyingly blank. He stared at her, barely able to speak, let alone string a whole sentence together. “I…” This was what he’d wanted, hadn’t it been? A way on to the dance floor? Even if he couldn’t pass Galadriel the letter here without being exposed, he could still make contact with her, make her that he had business with her. And yet he found himself locked in place. Why?

Finduilas waited for his response—too patiently, Maeglin thought, for someone who was keeping her waiting as long as he was, and whose gaping likely made him look like a fish stranded on dry land. When finally it became clear to her that he was going to supply no response more eloquent than a stammered “I…”, her mouth quirked in a wry smile. “Do you not know any of the Iathrim forms?”

Relieved to be handed such a simple question, Maeglin replied, “I’m afraid I don’t.”

Her smile brightened. “Well, not to worry, sir.” She took his hand in her own and began pulling him along behind her as she walked. Her hand was warm except for the band of a ring on her third finger, whose cold sank into Maeglin’s flesh like a knife left out in the snow. “For I _do_ know those forms.”

“This really isn’t…”

“There are less Edhil dancing closer to the doors.” She looked back, and her smile was positively dazzling. “It’s colder there, but we’ll have some peace.”

Maeglin could have given protest. When it came down to it, he could have wrenched his hand from her grasp without any trouble; her grip was hardly a tight one, and Maeglin knew his own strength. But as they walked around the room, skirting the walls to avoid colliding with the dancers, he found he didn’t really want to. He just… He was content with this.

Sure enough, the space closest to the door was only sparsely populated, and even then, most of the Edhil in this part of the hall were leaning against the walls, and the few who were dancing seemed completely sober. “I’ll lead,” Finduilas said. “Just watch what I’m doing. We’ll start slowly.”

The goal here was to watch her feet. Maeglin wasn’t a fool. He knew he would be able to get a better idea of the steps and the timing of the dance by watching her feet. This was a task, like crafting a knife in the forge. This was a skill to be learned, like the proper way to skin an animal so that its pelt could be put to good use. It was better to watch her feet. He knew that, and his gaze was straying to her face, instead.

Her cheeks were flushed. Maeglin didn’t think she had drank too much wine; she didn’t smell of it, and her step was surer and her eyes brighter than Maeglin could have thought. Pleasure or exertion, perhaps. She had a thin, faint scar on her right temple, near the hairline. From a knife, perhaps? No; Maeglin had gotten a look at the kind of knives the smiths of Nargothrond forged during a stay in Nogrod when he was half-grown, and the tips weren’t fine enough to produce such a thin scar. A very sharp hair pin, or a very sharp needle, could produce a scar like that. The curve of her mouth—

She caught his eye, and he felt his face grow warm when he realized just how long he had been looking at her face.

“Neither of your parents ever taught you the Iathrim forms?” Finduilas asked lightly.

“No.” His father wasn’t entirely fond of dancing, though there were times when, if he was in a very good mood, Aredhel or one of the household could persuade him. Aredhel would never have had any opportunity to learn the Iathrim forms, and she wasn’t a very good dancer, if how often she trod on her partners’ feet was any indication.

Finduilas quirked her left eyebrow, tilting her head slightly, so that the gold chain connecting the earrings in her left ear sparkled as if caught in sunlight. “Still, I’d hazard a guess that you are not entirely untaught.” When he blinked at her, she laughed. “You haven’t stepped on my feet, not even once. It’s a rare beginner who can claim that.”

“I… No, I am not entirely untaught.” Maeglin frowned slightly, as memories long put away, rarely examined, surfaced in his mind. “I learned a little as a young child.”

For the most part, when Maeglin and Eöl had visited the Hadhodrim for feasts and festivals, dancing has seen them both sitting on the sidelines. They weren’t… Well, to be frank, they were both, Eöl always and Maeglin by the time he was half-grown, too tall to dance with the Hadhodrim. Grown Edhil trying to dance with them was nothing quite so much as an invitation to engage in a great deal of tripping and falling.

But in the first few years, when Maeglin was still a very young, very small child, it had not been so. When he was very young and very small, one of his father’s friends had taken pity upon a bored child, and taught him how to dance. He could remember. It had been long ago by his reckoning, but he remembered it all. The memories, though rarely drawn out, came alive with ease. In those days, his father hadn’t minded it so much when he spoke to others without his permission, so when the time came to switch partners, that was just what he had done. They had spun round and round, untiring. He’d grown dizzy, but it hadn’t mattered; there were so many things that hadn’t mattered—

A squall of wind roared in the dark hallway outside, a terrible pounding like a thousand doors slamming shut following behind it.

“Maeglin?” What felt like an eternity passed in between Maeglin’s last breath and the sound of his name in Finduilas’s mouth. “Maeglin, are you alright?”

He stared almost frantically into the dark hallway. She sounded… How could she not _hear_ … “I… I am well.” Maeglin quelled the alarm that clouded his mind, only half-successfully, but enough to meet her gaze with something approaching equanimity. “Why do you ask?”

Finduilas did not look convinced. Her brow knit, she said, “You’ve turned as pale as a corpse. Is something wrong?”

It occurred to Maeglin to wonder when Finduilas would have ever had the opportunity to look upon a corpse, but he couldn’t quite find it in himself to ask. “I’m just cold,” he murmured.

Finduilas still did not look entirely convinced—the look in her pale eyes as she studied his face was a considering one. But rather than press the issue, she took both of his hands in hers and began leading him towards the crowd. “Well, if you are cold, dancing with the other courtiers should solve that problem. At this point…” She surveyed the crowd and heaved a sigh “…I don’t suppose your lack of experience is going to matter a great deal; the greater part of the court seems to have forgotten much of what they knew, as well.”

Maeglin decided he liked better the prospect of being constantly bumped into and stepped on by drunken dancers than standing near the entrance to the hallway. “Lead on.”

Sure enough, joining the throng translated into being constantly bumped into, shouldered, elbowed, and jostled, until Maeglin’s back throbbed with what felt like two dozen and more forming bruises, layered on top of each other. But Finduilas kept a firm grip on his hand and his shoulder so that they wouldn’t be pulled apart by the crowd, and though she was being jostled just as much as Maeglin, she seemed untroubled, her eyes scanning the crowd with some interest.

“You haven’t met the Princess Lúthien yet, have you?” she asked suddenly, staring further into the room.

“I have not.” Maeglin had heard tales spoken of Lúthien, even in the short time he had spent in Menegroth, but he had not laid eyes on her.

“I did not think so. She didn’t arrive in Menegroth until this evening; I believe she was wandering Neldoreth these past few weeks. Lúthien doesn’t spend a great deal of time in Menegroth during the spring. If you want to find her, you practically have to enlist one of the marchwardens to track her through the forests.”

 _That sounds familiar_ , Maeglin thought, something bitter curdling in his stomach.

“But tonight you are in luck,” Finduilas went on. She pointed towards the center of the room. “There she is. She’s dancing with my cousin, Nimloth.”

Maeglin found Nimloth first. She was immediately identifiable by the ruff of tall, fluffy white feathers she wore around the collar of her dress; Maeglin had yet to lay eyes on anyone else in the royal court who wore anything similar. She was dancing with a very tall woman, taller than anyone else in the room, save the king and queen. Maeglin had to look at her for but a moment to realize that this was indeed Lúthien, Princess of Doriath.

She bore little resemblance to her father. Instead, she was in many respects her mother in miniature. She had clouds of loose, shadowy black hair that floated in the air, as if Lúthien was underwater and her hair borne up by the currents. She appeared more solid to the eye than did Melian the Queen, as something truly made of flesh and bone rather than woven together by mist and stardust and magic. She still glowed, more faintly than Melian, her skin shining like snow in noonday sunlight, but you could almost believe that came from perspiration, if not for the nimbus of light shimmering all around her. Her eyes were bright and dark and shining, but while the light in them wasn’t the reflection of a reflection Maeglin had seen in Thingol’s eyes, neither was it the terrible brightness that shone from Melian’s eyes, that which was hair-raising to look upon. It was closer kin to the latter than the former, but duller, less eldritch.

When thoughts of Melian entered his mind, Maeglin found his eyes straying, inexorably drawn towards the high table.

She was still there. Asides from his father, Melian the Queen was the only member of the royal court who had remained seated at the high table when the dancing began. Unlike Eöl, who had lost the battle with his headache and was now sitting with his elbow propped up on the table, his hand massaging his forehead, Melian sat tall and straight—unnaturally straight, as if there was no curve at all to her spine. She presided over the revelry serene and expressionless; whatever occurred below her, it had no effect. The crimson blossoms on her horns— _no, they’re not horns; they’re just branches_. The crimson blossoms of the branches woven into her hair had shut, petals all wound together. Maeglin thought the leaves on the branches looked a little larger than they had the day before.

Suddenly, Melian looked directly at him, her eyes snapping to his face. He…

Maeglin’s first impulse was to look away. When confronted by such terribly bright, penetrating eyes, perhaps it would have been braver to meet her gaze squarely, to _want_ to meet her gaze squarely. But though shame bubbled up in his throat, Maeglin tore his gaze away from hers as soon as he was able—which was only after far too long for his comfort, after she had regarded him in silence for several moments, her expression never changing, and then looked away. He got the distinct impression that he had only been able to look away because she had _allowed_ him to do so. He drew closer to Finduilas and didn’t look towards the head of the room again.

When Finduilas spotted someone she might be of interest to Maeglin, she pointed them out to him in a low voice, nodding or pointing. “There is Daeron, the king’s loremaster,” she would murmur, or “There is Mablung, one of the great marchwardens of Doriath.” “There is our cousin, Galathil, and his wife, Thínloth; they are Nimloth’s parents.” When she smiled and said, “There is my aunt, Galadriel,” bitterness lanced through Maeglin’s stomach like a hot needle.

But soon, bitterness was reflected, if rather less intensely, on Finduilas’s face. “There’s…” She trailed off, frowning deeply.

Maeglin followed her gaze to look at a dark-haired woman who was laughing uproariously as she danced. Her features were… He looked back at Finduilas’s face, eyes narrowed. She was another kinsman, perhaps, though her resemblance to Finduilas was only a faint one. Still… “Are you alright?” he asked quietly, tilting his head to get a better look at her face.

She stared at the woman for a moment longer before her eyes cleared and she turned back to Maeglin. She gave a glassy smile and replied, “It’s nothing. That was just—Oof!”

Finduilas never got the chance to finish her sentence. Before either of them could jump out of the way, a line of Edhil swayed, listing dangerously from side to side, then fell, colliding with several of the people around them—including Maeglin and Finduilas.

“Ah!”

“Oh, my—“

“Look out!”

Maeglin landed heavily on his back, his head spinning. He wheezed as he struggled to push the Edhel who had landed on top of him off of him, gritting his teeth and trying to ignore the way his bruised back was screaming at him. The Edhel was no help, of course; they flailed like a crab that had been tipped over onto its back, caught between wails and laughter.

“I think I forgot to mention.” Finduilas’s faint, muffled voice came from somewhere close to Maeglin’s right ear. He looked over and saw her lying on her stomach beside him. Her gold hair was all over her face; only her mouth was visible, and then, just barely. The net of pearls on her head was askew, dangling over one ear; hairpins dragged from their proper place glittered in the lamp light. Three drops of blood quivered at her hairline like garnets.  “This tends to happen when many of the dancers get to be very drunk.”

She reached out blindly for him, her hand groping the tile floor. Maeglin watched her hand, a tightness coming over his chest that had nothing to do with the Edhel lying on top of him. Slowly, tentatively, he pressed his fingertips to the back of her hand. Her skin was soft and supple under his callused fingertips, yielding easily to touch. “I’m here, Princess,” he murmured.

All of a sudden, he felt extremely foolish. His face burning, Maeglin jerked his hand away, grateful that Finduilas was unable to see what had passed over his face when he had touched her hand. At the same time he did that, Finduilas abruptly raised her head, and the three drops of blood on her forehead fell one by one onto the back of his hand, hot and dark on white flesh.

“It’s…” She sighed and laughed, reaching up to brush her hair out of her face. “Oh, never mind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary of Terms:
> 
>  **Celon** —a slender tributary of Aros that had its origins in the hills around Himring, and flowed southwest until it emptied into Aros. It was the western border of Nan Elmoth, and also served as the boundary between Himlad and Estolad.  
>  **Edhel** — Elf (plural: Edhil) (Sindarin)  
>  **Hadhodrim** — a Sindarin name for the Dwarves, ultimately adapted from the Khuzdul Khazâd (singular: Hadhod) (Sindarin)  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath  
>  **Ithil** —the Sindarin name for the Moon; of the Sun and the Moon, it is the elder of the two vessels, lit by Telperion’s last flower; in an early version of ‘Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor’ was said to be “the giver of visions” ( _The Lost Road_ 264). As this form is very similar to ‘Isil’, the Quenya form (which is likely to be its original form, as the vessel of the Moon was made in Aman), it is likely that ‘Ithil’ was adapted from ‘Isil’; all I can suppose is that the Valar got in contact with Melian at some point during the First Age to share information.


	4. Chapter Four

It was interesting, Maeglin thought impatiently, that his father so rarely ever admitted visitors into Nan Elmoth, and then, no Edhil. It was interesting because, ever since they had arrived in Menegroth, Eöl had cared to do nothing but visit with Edhil, whenever their presence was not expected in the feasting hall. They had only traipsed back into their shared apartments around an hour before the evening’s festivities were set to begin yesterday. And though many of the Edhil of Menegroth were gathering to celebrate in the market squares and other meeting places during the day, Eöl was demonstrating a remarkable talent for finding all of the other Edhil in the city who had shunned celebrations in favor of work.

If Maeglin was learning anything from all of this, he was learning how many smithies and workshops a city the size of Menegroth needed in order to function. Combined, Maeglin had seen at least twenty so far, and from what he had heard, he suspected there were many more tucked away in parts of the city he’d not yet seen. And it had afforded him a chance to see more of the city—he _had_ been curious. Menegroth was truly a rabbit warren, but he’d walked down enough of its winding hallways and snaking corridors enough times that he thought he had a decent grasp of some of the routes to and from their lodgings.

His mother had warned him that he would need to be patient if he wanted to find the best time to hand the letter off to Galadriel. She had never said anything about the chance that he would be completely overwhelmed by boredom.

Not a comfortable kind of boredom, certainly. But the Edhil who ran the workshops and forges here were extremely particular about who they let interfere with or even handle their work. Eöl’s ‘interference’ was acceptable because he was known to them, and because he had a well-deserved reputation as a smith of exceptional skill. Maeglin, on the other hand, was a stranger to them, and his father’s word wasn’t enough to persuade the Iathrim to let him ‘interfere’ in their work. Since his father would not let him stay in their apartments alone, nor walk the city corridors at liberty, there was nothing for Maeglin to do but stand and watch Eöl visit with the Iathrim, or stare out a window (If there was one, which there wasn’t always).

Maeglin didn’t bother listening closely to the conversation going on further back in the room. Some of the more secretive Iathrim narrowed their eyes at him if they thought he’d been listening too closely, evidently afraid of that he would take their secrets and use them ill. He couldn’t muster enough frustration to drown the spark of fellow-feeling that ignited in his heart. When he felt it, it was all he could do not to— Well. It was better not to listen too closely. If he heard his name called, he would respond to that. Otherwise, it would be as though there was silence.

Though he paid no heed to the conversation, Maeglin did take notice when an Edhel he had met in the first workshop he and Eöl had visited their first morning here, stepped into the forge. Her eyes darted around the room until they found Eöl; she hurried over to him and whispered something into his ear, before hurrying back out.

A frown grew on Eöl’s face after she left, one so marked that curiosity overrode caution and Maeglin walked over to where his father stood. As he did so, he noticed for the first time that neither he nor the Edhel from that first workshop left any tracks on the floor as they walked; there was no soot on the floor to be disturbed.  This place was clean, much cleaner than the smithies of Nan Elmoth or Nogrod or Belegost, as if it was never used. But he put that from his mind and asked, “Father? What is it?”

Eöl started, as though he’d not heard Maeglin approach. After a while, he met his son’s gaze, shaking his head dismissively. “Don’t concern yourself with it. We’ll just need to make another visit today, is all.”

A flash of inspiration took root in Maeglin’s mind. “If you need to send a message to them, I can take it to the workshop for you,” he offered, schooling his face to neutrality—hopefully enough so that Eöl would not catch sight of the hope flaring inside of him.

Eöl narrowed his eyes as he looked Maeglin over, similar to the Edhil who feared he would ‘interfere’ with their work, and yet more piercing. “Do you know how to find that workshop, and return here once you are done there?” he asked pointedly.

 _Have you disobeyed me?_ Maeglin thought he heard. _Have you gone exploring the city without my leave?_ But there was a simple answer to this question, even if Eöl seemed to have missed it. “We passed that workshop on our way here,” he pointed out, and managed, with effort, to keep it from sounding like a retort. “It should be simple enough to go there and come back.”

Eöl regarded him a moment longer before sighing and taking quill and paper from the nearest desk. “Very well,” he muttered, as he wrote the message out. “But you are to go _directly_ to that workshop, and come _directly_ back. I don’t want you wandering off.”

“I won’t, Father.”

And he wouldn’t. He knew Eöl would expect him back before long, and that there was every chance he would lose his way if he stepped off the beaten track. But there was a chance, however remote, that he would cross paths with Galadriel. He would just have to keep his eyes open.

Maeglin saw no sign of Galadriel on his way to the workshop. But as he was starting to head back, he saw something that gave him pause.

He was in the courtyard he had looked down upon two days past, standing under one of the ‘holly trees.’ Now that he was down in the courtyard proper, he could no longer deny what he had thought he had imagined earlier. The trees did indeed sway as if in some breeze, silver branches rustling and emerald leaves and carnelian berries clinking gently together, though Maeglin could feel no breeze. He wasn’t certain if it comforted him more or less that there was no breeze to make the trees sway so.

On closer inspection, he noted that the ‘holly trees did not have trunks made of twisted wire, as his mother had described Glingal and Belthil possessing. Instead, their silver trunks and silver branches were solid and, as best as Maeglin could determine, each tree had been forged as a single piece. How that had been accomplished, he had no idea. _Magic_ , he thought dully, and tried not to watch them swaying.

The courtyard was mostly empty today, unlike most of the open spaces similar in size. Perhaps this space was considered too out of the way to be part of the celebrations, or perhaps it was supposed to be kept clear and quiet. Whatever the reason, today, Maeglin found himself alone in the courtyard, apart from two others.

An Edhel and her child sat on one of the benches, the former reading from an open book on her lap, while the child, a tiny little thing, really, looked on with intense interest. The fountain was between him and them; sheets of silvery water and their babble impaired sight and hearing. But Maeglin could make out enough.

“Can you tell me what this word is?”

“It’s…” The child’s face screwed up in concentration. “It’s… it’s ‘flower’!”

“Very good, dear! Do you want me to read to you some more?”

“Yes!”

Maeglin watched them in silence, something hot and hard churning in his gut.

It had been a long time ago by his reckoning, but he could remember his mother teaching him Quenya. Aredhel would wait until Eöl was away from Nan Elmoth or ensconced deep in the smithy, unlikely to emerge for hours, if not longer. They would slip quietly out of the halls, Aredhel’s white dress concealed by a voluminous green cloak. For as long as they walked, she would be looking over her shoulder for any sign that they were being followed, and bade Maeglin do the same. They would find a secluded spot, far from watchful eyes—never the same spot twice in a row; she always insisted on that—where the soil was loose enough for her to sketch letters into the dirt.

This was where Maeglin had learned what Quenya his mother had been able to teach him, before his father took a greater interest in his upbringing and lessons became rarer. Snatches of vocabulary and grammar, sentence structure and pronunciation, heritage shining out of Tengwar letters that were obliterated by a swipe of Aredhel’s foot whenever she came to fear that they would be missed if they lingered outside any longer. He had learned to speak Quenya in hushed whispers, learned to write it by scratching letters into the did where they would be wiped away with your hand or washed away by a few drops of rain, and he was no master, not as she was. If these Edhil knew what he and she had done, they’d…

Maeglin watched the Edhel and her child, his hands curling into fists, as that hard, hot feeling resolved itself into a scream. He quelled it, and it was like it had never been.

Movement in the corridor closest to where he stood caught Maeglin’s eye. He turned, expecting to see his father stalking down the hall towards him, but what—who—he saw was not his father. A swish of mist-like fabric and smoky hair caught his eye; a strain of song, inaudible and yet rattling inside of his skull, settled into hearing like steady flow of a forest brook. He turned, and saw Melian the Queen emerge from one of the hallways that intersected the corridor leading into the courtyard. She wasn’t alone. Lúthien was with her, walking on her right side, her hand on her mother’s forearm and her head tipped back as she flashed a smile like undiluted sunlight.

And on Melian’s left-hand side, there was Galadriel.

Maeglin’s breath caught in his throat. He took a step forward to follow after them—all knowledge of the fact that he needed to go back to the forge, that Eöl would miss him soon fled his mind; all that mattered was following after Galadriel, somehow getting her attention without drawing the attention of the queen or her daughter (Or anyone else who might carry tales of his activities back to his father). Mercifully, he didn’t have to follow far; they stopped, talking amongst themselves, Melian’s rich, deep voice somehow managing to reverberate on the wall without being loud enough for Maeglin to make out what she was saying. He stood at a distance, watching in silence.

Eventually, the group separated. Lúthien swept past Maeglin as though he wasn’t there. As she passed, the air was filled with a sweet smell that was heady without being cloying, like a bower full of flowers. Galadriel, meanwhile, strode down the same corridor Maeglin needed to follow to get back to the forge where his father waited. Convenient. Heart pounding, Maeglin followed after her, resisting the urge to call out, not while there were others in earshot, but…

“Maeglin, child.”

At the sound of that crackling voice so full of power, Maeglin found his legs leaden, his feet rooted to the ground. His heart pounded so hard he thought it might burst, his breath coming out in short, shallow gasps like a rabbit caught in a snare. _Some hunter_. The bitter thought was distant in the back of his mind; the thoughts at the front told him to turn to her, even if he would rather move on.

“Yes, my Queen?” The words came out of his mouth stiff and faint, almost drawn-out thoughts rather than spoken words.

“Peace, Maeglin,” she said, and the wave of calm that tried to sweep over him was so obviously foreign that he batted it away furiously. Melian smiled; so slowly did the smile grow across her smooth, still face that it looked more like a practiced gesture than something that came naturally to her. Given how hesitant he was to smile at times, Maeglin found that this did far better in calming him than any words of hers. “I will not harm you.”

Maeglin let his shoulders slump a little from the stiff posture they had previously entertained. He felt the urge to speak, as though his tongue was being dragged by hooks. He kept his mouth clamped shut, and stared up at her, craning his neck so as to (not quite) meet her gaze. Whatever she wanted with him, surely she would tell him.

Even staring at a point just below Melian’s eyes, Maeglin still took notice when the awful light within them flickered slightly. “There is fear in you, child.”

“What—“ Maeglin’s eyes widened; the part of him that was his mother’s son and her family’s blood repulsed on instinct. “No, I…” But he could find nothing to say, no refutation of his own cowardice that did not shrivel up into nothingness in his mouth. All vain words fled in the presence of one who was of the kindred of the Rodyn.

She moved towards him, the many layers of her robes whispering in some forgotten tongue. As she drew closer to Maeglin, he felt a tremor in the earth that resolved itself into a steady pulse, the floor seeming to rise and fall as did a— He banished the thought, but his eye was still irresistibly drawn to the sheer crimson topmost layer of her robes. How the pale wings of the butterflies printed on the fabric beat and fluttered and swirled.

“You are far from home, Maeglin,” she said softly, but softness could not extinguish the power in her voice, “in a strange land.”

Maeglin said nothing, slamming the doors of his mind ever more firmly shut.

A hand lit on his shoulder, and Maeglin was thunderstruck by how solid it felt. He had not expected Melian to ever touch him, but he would have thought that her touch would be like making contact with open flame. As it was, her hand was warmer than was natural than Edhil—not the comforting warmth that Finduilas’s hand had had, but warmer and warmer still, like a brand that had had just enough time to cool that it would not burn. The comparison was an apt one; even through the many layers of robes Melian wore, crimson and pink and plum and black, Maeglin could make out her arm glowing bright white. He could feel no pulse in her hand.

Finally, he willed himself to look directly into her eyes. He was not afraid, he was _not_ afraid—but still, he was at a loss for anything to say.

Melian smiled down at him again. The flowers on her h—on the _branches_ woven into her pitch black hair were open again, larger and more numerous than they had been the day before; a sweet scent, similar to what had wafted by with Lúthien, filled the air, so strong that Maeglin’s head spun. The branches themselves seemed longer than they had been yesterday, now reaching a good foot and a half above her head. “It is difficult to leave your home,” she murmured, “especially when you have known little else. Whatever the Eldar believe of the Ainur, know that we have felt the same fears as you.”

Maeglin had a difficult time imagining when she who stood before him had ever felt fear. She hardly seemed tethered to the world at all; what had she to fear? But he nodded choppily. “Yes, my Queen.”

He hoped that that would be the end of this conversation. Surely, he hadn’t let anything else slip, and what would Melian the Queen want with him, anyways?

Instead, she stared ever more deeply into his face, the light of her eyes utterly unbearable—and yet, he could not look away, his gaze riveted upon her face. “You have perceived something few others have.” It was not a question. “What you have perceived has left you disturbed.” That was not a question, either.

She had left the doors and windows of his mind alone, and instead plucked at the thread of a surface thought. The locks on the doors and the shutters on bars and the windows would have been as sturdy as a butterfly’s wing to someone with her kind of power; she could have ripped them open and supped on his mind the way you cracked an eggshell to drink the yolk. She could have learned _everything_ that Maeglin desired to keep hidden. And she had left it alone. This was not comforting.

“Yes,” he croaked. All his senses were screaming at him to run, stronger than ever, and still his legs were as lead, his feet rooted the ground.

“Tomorrow in the morning, I shall come for you.” It was as if she was discussing breakfast arrangements; her voice was even, her face seeming more a carven mask than a simulacrum of flesh for how very _still_ it was. “I will answer your questions then, and you shall answer a question of mine.”

She drew her hand from his shoulder and glided away, silent but for the rustling of her robes. Suddenly, it was as though he had been choked and allowed to breathe again; Maeglin sucked deep, gasping breaths into his screaming lungs, coughing and pressing his hand to the wall for balance. His legs wobbled dangerously, weak as a newborn fawn’s.

A hand curled around his elbow, an arm around his waist, both pulling him upright. Eöl peered into his face, frowning slightly. “When the queen wants something from you, speaking with her can have this effect.” His frown deepened. “What did she want?”

“I scarcely know,” Maeglin forced out in a faint voice.

Eöl snorted. “That sounds familiar.”

There was no chance of finding Galadriel and speaking with her in private, not now. Eöl kept his arm curled around Maeglin’s shoulders as they walked back to the forge, as if he thought Maeglin might collapse without something to hold him up. Maeglin had to remind himself, every few seconds, of all the reasons why he shouldn’t lean into him. “The queen said she wanted me to go somewhere with her tomorrow morning,” Maeglin said after a long silence.

For once, he found himself hoping that his father would respond true to form and forbid him to go off with her. It was an unworthy thought for someone who carried his mother’s blood, but still, he found himself hoping for it. But a dull stab of dismay cut into him when his father said, “It is not for the likes of us to gainsay the queen. If she wants you for something, you must obey.”

Maeglin would have to be brave, then. As his mother had said, he could be brave.

-0-0-0-

That evening when the dancing began, Maeglin found himself seeking Finduilas out, rather than the other way around. He knew that if his father realized what he was doing, trouble would arise from it. But Eöl was speaking with Thingol, who’d elected tonight to stay seated at the high table rather than join the revelers. Maeglin might not be able to pass his mother’s letter along with his father in the room, but perhaps there were other things he could do. After what had happened that morning, he felt he had to try.

(Melian was nowhere to be found that night. Maeglin didn’t know if that relieved him or terrified him.)

He edged around the walls, trying this time not to look too long at the images carven there. He caught sight of movement flickering on the walls, but to the best of his ability, he paid it no mind. With everything else that was happening, he had no desire to contend with that as well.

So far, any attempt to hand Aredhel’s letter off to Galadriel had either ended in failure, or had been aborted before it could be attempted. He had little time left; the day after tomorrow, they would be gone from this place, and gone also would be any chance Maeglin and Aredhel had of escaping Nan Elmoth for the foreseeable future. Maeglin’s heart constricted at the prospect. He _had_ to find a way to put that letter into Galadriel’s hands, but he couldn’t even ask someone where she lived without risking exposure. His mother had thought that certain other kin of Galadriel’s might be trustworthy. Maeglin wasn’t as certain, himself. Not when he was alone here.

 _There she is_.

Speaking of ‘other kin,’ he had found Finduilas. Though she had left the high table when the dancing began, she had apparently thought better of dancing after what happened last night. She was leaning against the wall, speaking in hushed tones with Nimloth, who seemed to have thought better of dancing as well. They made for a striking pair, in terms of colors; one gold-headed, dressed in gold and rich, dark purple, the other silver-headed, clothed in stark black and white, a collar of white feathers standing close around her neck.

The moment Maeglin laid eyes on Finduilas, he paused, uncertain of how to proceed. His stomach fluttered as he drank in deeply the sight of her. It struck him, cold and sniggering derisively, that he had no idea of what he would say to her—what had he expected to do, just stand there and bask in her presence? That _was_ it, he realized suddenly, or at least it must have been, if he had truly had no idea of what to say to her. The fluttering in his stomach turned to churning.

Unlike others Maeglin could have named, Finduilas had little sense of when someone was staring at her. _Or perhaps not everyone is so nervous as you_ , he thought bitterly. _Perhaps there are some who are sure enough of themselves, their surroundings and their companions that they aren’t constantly looking over their shoulders, worried about who might be listening._

He was the child of one who had braved Nan Dungortheb and the Helcaraxë both. He was the grandchild of one who had led the Exiles across the Helcaraxë and led them into battle in Beleriand. He ought to be brave enough for this.

Maeglin stepped forwards.

“Princess,” he murmured, once he was close enough that he wouldn’t have to raise his voice for Finduilas to hear him.

Finduilas and Nimloth both turned, the former seeming, well, not startled, not exactly. Not as if she had been expecting him, but as though—at least, Maeglin found himself hoping so—she wasn’t upset with the idea of him being there. “Maeglin.” She smiled, not with the unnatural brightness of undiluted sunlight, but the sort of smile that he could easily visualize on any Edhel’s face, if possessing the curve and stretch of muscles that made it unique to her own. There was something very comforting about that. It felt almost like being safe. “You don’t feel like dancing, either?”

He shook his head, absurdly grateful for that prompt. “No, Princess.” It was as though he was being knocked to the ground all over again, and he grimaced. “Not after last night.”

Finduilas let out a soft, rueful laugh. She traced her finger over a thin red scratch on her forehead; she _was_ noticeably without the net of gold and pearls she had worn on her head the night before. “I know that feeling. They seem a little subdued compared to last night, but all the same, I think the idea of dancing has soured on me a bit.”

Personally, Maeglin couldn’t see how the dancers seemed any more subdued, but Finduilas had had more experience with that sort of thing than he had.

“What a wretched first impression,” Nimloth remarked, cracking a lopsided grin. She had a deep, smooth voice that trilled upwards in the suggestion of a laugh.

Finduilas nudged her gently in the ribs. “Yes, and I wonder if you had anything to do with it.”

Nimloth really did laugh now, the tendrils of hair she’d let stay loose from the knot of silver hair at the back of her head trembling violently. “Not me this time!”

The three of them watched the dancers in silence, Maeglin torn between anger at himself for finding nothing to say, and an abrupt, startling jolt of relief that she hadn’t seemed unhappy with his presence or sent him away. Nimloth occasionally leaned over and whispered something in Finduilas’s ear, to which Finduilas would nod or laugh or whisper something back. On one occasion, Nimloth’s slate-gray eyes flickered to Maeglin as she whispered; frowning curiously, Maeglin strained his ears, but still couldn’t make anything out. Finduilas’s reaction was immediately—she jabbed Nimloth in the ribs again, more sharply but still gently enough to give the lie to any idea of real anger, her face turning slightly pink as she did so.

They both behaved as though they hadn’t a care in the world, and perhaps they didn’t. Menegroth was well-protected from outside attacks; from what little Maeglin had heard, so too was Nargothrond a sanctuary for the children of the Eldar. They were kin to him through Eöl, but somehow, Maeglin doubted their parents shared much of Eöl’s spirit. He hadn’t come across anyone in Menegroth who did.

But all of a sudden, a cloud passed over Finduilas’s face, her smile fading away. She was staring fixedly at a point off to her left; when Maeglin followed her gaze, he found that she was looking upon the same dark-haired woman who had captured her attention the night before. The woman herself was clearly oblivious of scrutiny, dancing just as blithely as she had last night. The more Finduilas watched her, the more her lips thinned, seemingly caught between displeasure and something weaker than melancholy, too composed to be distress. Maeglin chanced pressing his fingertips to her forearm. “Princess? What’s wrong?” he asked in a low voice.

Finduilas jumped as though jerked out of some reverie. She said nothing at first, her mouth working, but no sound coming out. Nimloth, who had been looking the same way as them, spoke up instead. “Leave it alone, Maeglin,” she said, not unkindly, but still with an edge of steel in her voice that was impossible to miss.

“No, it’s alright, Nimloth,” Finduilas said to her, in a voice that didn’t sound faint so much as it sounded faintly tired. “’Tis an old story, now, not a fresh one. Besides—“ she turned her attention to Maeglin and flashed a smile that didn’t quite meet her eyes “—if you are going to be a guest in Menegroth at any point in the future, you are bound to hear about this, and I would rather you hear it from me first.”

Already, Maeglin thought that he didn’t care for the path the conversation was heading down. However, he found also that his curiosity was awake, so in spite of his misgivings, he nodded for her to continue.

“That woman,” Finduilas said, very softly, “is the lady Gilnel, my grandmother.” Finduilas blinked and sighed. “My maternal grandmother,” she amended. “My paternal grandmother is Eärwen of the Falmari, who…” She trailed off, her mouth stretching in a bitter line.

“Who resides in the Undying Lands,” Maeglin supplied, looking away.

“Yes,” she said, and though her voice was quiet, there was no mistaking the bitter strain twisting there.

Though not intending to be, both were silent for several moments. Eventually, Nimloth cleared her throat loudly, and it was as though a spell had been broken. Finduilas’s face flushed dark red, and Maeglin felt vaguely as though his skin might jump off his body. This was no place to be having such thoughts.

“My mother, Meresír, is kin to Thingol,” Finduilas went on. “Not close kin, but kin, nonetheless—though she has never explained to me just _how_ they are related.” Maeglin nodded; Eöl had never really explained how they were kin to Thingol, either, though the fact that he could be here at all proved that they were related somehow. “My father, as you likely know, is Orodreth, brother to the king of Nargothrond and Lady Galadriel, one of the Exiles.”

He knew. Son of Arfin, first cousin to Aredhel, first cousin once-removed to Maeglin. He couldn’t tell her, but he knew.

“After the truth of the Kinslaying came out, the Ban wasn’t the only thing to come of it,” Finduilas said softly. She twisted the ring on her hand, a delicate gold band with a single pearl set into the base, back and forth as she spoke. “There were some among the Iathrim who felt that to intermarry with the Ñoldor to be anathema. Not only because it would mean coming under the Doom, but because it would be a betrayal to the surviving Falmari to marry one who killed their kin and stole their ships.”

“Even if the Exile in question was not a kinslayer,” Nimloth added in a low voice. Her brow was deeply furrowed, her lips pursed. “But only kin to them.”

Finduilas smiled bitterly. “My parents wished to marry, but my mother’s parents refused to give their blessing to the match, as is expected among the Iathrim. Nothing could persuade them to relent, just as nothing could persuade my parents to separate.” She drew a deep breath, her nostrils flaring. “In the end, my parents left Doriath, and they are wed according to the customs of the Exiles, even if it is not a marriage the Iathrim would recognize. They live in Minas Tirith now, where the disapproval of the Iathrim cannot reach them.”

 _And you were sent to Nargothrond._ She was known as Finduilas of _Nargothrond_ , after all, not Finduilas of Minas Tirith. Maeglin had heard a little about Minas Tirith from his mother. Though located in fair lands, Minas Tirith was remote and isolated from the other realms of the Exiles. It was a fortress, not a city, and was but sparsely populated. There had Orodreth and Meresír gone, driven away by…

“It… must be difficult, being separated from your kin because of…” He heard himself say the words, but there was something else brewing in his mind, and the words were so feeble they trailed off in no time at all.

“You must have experienced the same thing.” Finduilas’s pale eyes glimmered with sympathy. “Nan Elmoth’s borders are closed, and you yourself told me that you have only rarely traveled beyond the forest. I imagine you have many kin you see but rarely, or not at all.”

What was brewing proceeded to boil and spill over in short order. “It was wrong!” he hissed. “Your parents were…” He swallowed. “There was no coercion.” It was more difficult to say than it should have been. “Your father was no kinslayer. I do not understand why they should have to…”

Why one should be driven from their home and forced to live elsewhere, why both would face such opprobrium here that they would be driven from this place, whether because they wished to avoid the scorn of certain factions of the court, or because her parents’ behavior had offended them both so much that they did not wish to return. Why both should be forced to live far from home, though they called different places home.

The scream rising at the back of his throat had little to do with that, however.

Finduilas stared at him in silence, her eyes wide and her face gone very still. Behind her, Nimloth’s lip was twitching, but there was no movement on Finduilas’s face asides from the way her eyes flicked over his face, over and over again.

The longer she was silent, the more foolish Maeglin felt, the more certain he was that he had taken a step too far. It was her grandparents whom he had berated, even if they had caused her and her parents as much trouble as they had. There was only so much ties of blood would allow, even when she had previously been friendly to him.

But her face melted into a warm, if somewhat startled, smile. She pressed her hand to his forearm, her fingers curling gently around the fabric of his sleeve. “Thank you,” she said, an odd, slightly taut note in her voice. “Truth be told, I am rarely given trouble over it, but…” She paused, the startled quality melting away from her smile, replaced with a softness that made Maeglin feel slightly as though he was made of air. “…Thank you.”

They each held the other’s gaze, and said nothing more. For Maeglin, for just a moment, it was as though all the cares he had brought here with him had flown away. He remembered them soon, but what a wonderful moment it was, while it lasted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary of Terms:
> 
>  **Belthil** —‘Divine Radiance’ (Sindarin); a metal tree located in the courts of Turgon in Gondolin, wrought by Turgon himself. It was created to be an image and reminder of Telperion, and possessed silver flowers. It is said that the light that filled this tree and its mate, Glingal, filled all the roads of the city.  
>  **Edhel** — Elf (plural: Edhil) (Sindarin)  
>  **Eldar** —‘People of the Stars’ (Quenya); a name first given to the Elves by Oromë when he found them by Cuiviénen, but later came to refer only to those who answered the summons to Aman and set out on the March, with those who chose to remain by Cuiviénen coming to be known as the Avari; the Eldar were composed of these groups: the Vanyar, Ñoldor (those among them who chose to go to Aman), and the Teleri (including their divisions: the Lindar, Falmari, Sindar and Nandor).  
>  **Falmari** —those among the Teleri who completed the journey to Aman; the name is derived from the Quenya falma, '[crested] wave.'  
>  **Glingal** —‘Hanging Flame’ (Sindarin); a metal tree made of gold located in the courts of Turgon in Gondolin, wrought by Turgon himself. It was created to be a reminder and an image of Laurelin, and bore gold flowers.  
>  **Helcaraxë** —the Grinding Ice (Quenya); the bridge of ice between Araman and Middle-Earth in the far north of the world. Morgoth and Ungoliant escaped to Middle-Earth by this road after destroying the Two Trees. Later, after the burning of the ships at Losgar, the Ñoldorin exiles abandoned on the other side of the sea traveled to Middle-Earth by this road at great risk to themselves.  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath.  
>  **Rodyn** — Valar (singular: Rodon) (Sindarin): a common Sindarin name for the Valar


	5. Chapter Five

It was only late that night, when they returned to their apartments, that Maeglin realized that he had never asked Melian what time in the morning she would come for him, and that neither had she volunteered that information. When he asked Eöl, all Eöl would say that it was not for the likes of them to keep the queen waiting, and that he’d best be up early, the better to be ready for whatever she had in store for him. Whatever she had in store… Maeglin would have liked it better if he had any idea of what that was.

Not for the first time, Maeglin woke to a sky full of stars where there should have been none. This time, the tumult in his mind lasted only a moment before he remembered where he was. _This city is bizarre_. He slid his hand under his pillow and pressed fingertips to, by this time, somewhat worn, dog-eared paper. His heart began keeping a staccato, slightly uneven rhythm.

This was the last full day he would spend in Menegroth. Sometime tomorrow—Eöl had not specified exactly when—they would leave this place and return to shadowed Nan Elmoth. This was the last chance he had to reach Galadriel away from prying eyes and give her his mother’s letter. He did not trust anyone who was kin to him and not the Ñoldor not to expose him to his father; that seed of suspicion had germinated, and would not be uprooted. He would not fail. He _could not_ fail. He had to reach her. But how to do that, when his movements were as curtailed as they had been?

Well, that wasn’t what he needed to be concerned about, not at the moment. Al he could hope for was that whatever Melian wanted him for, she would release him before the evening.

Maeglin dressed in cagey, apprehensive silence, straining his ears for any sound that might herald the coming of a queen—though for a queen like Melian, he wasn’t at all certain what he needed to be listening for. Trembling in the foundations of the earth, perhaps. He ran a comb through his hair, perhaps a tad more self-consciously than he would normally have done—his hair wasn’t as wild as Aredhel’s, and wasn’t nearly so coarse, but it tended towards tangling and it felt wrong to go to an audience with the queen thusly.

As he finished dressing, Maeglin hesitated, wondering if it wouldn’t be better to leave the letter here. Whatever the letter read, it was something no doubt offensive to the heart of Menegroth. But in the end, he tucked it under his shirt, just as he had done the last few days. If his father was to find it, something worse than merely offending Melian the Queen would come to pass.

He sat at the low table in the antechamber, catching himself drumming his fingers on the table three times and forcing himself to stop. Finally, after several minutes of nothing that could be termed a knock on the door, he hazarded a look out into the hallway.

There she was, standing just outside the door, luminous in a gloom that the dim blue lamp light could not pierce.

“I…” Maeglin stared helplessly up at her. “…I kept you waiting.”

Melian shook her head. “You have not.” The power in her voice was slightly muffled, as though to keep the others from waking. “I foresaw that it would be at this time. Come with me now, and I will show you something few others have seen.” She looked past Maeglin her expression never shifting. “No harm will come to him in my care.” Maeglin’s head whipped around, only for him to catch sight of Eöl standing behind him, his face like carven stone. “However, what I am to show him is not for your eyes. You must not accompany us.”

Eöl stared long into Melian’s face, as though he thought he could divine the secrets of her mind with his own power. Eventually, he tore his gaze away from her and nodded, face downcast.

“Come with me,” Melian murmured, and Maeglin had little choice but to obey. His legs were moving of their own accord.

The corridors were as they were the last time Maeglin had stepped out into them while it was still night—gloomy, deserted, and entirely too alive. As Melian drifted along, seemingly oblivious to it all, Maeglin’s heart bobbed in his throat as he felt the pulse throbbing in the floor, saw the torches flicker and flare as one, watched out of the corner of his eye as shapes darted behind the carven trees and bushes on the walls and stared out at him, felt a breeze like hot breath tickle the back of his neck. He expected at any moment for the floor to open and swallow him up, rending his flesh in its teeth and grinding his bones to meal. But Melian led on, and he had no choice but to follow.

Melian led him down and down and down. Down hallways with doors and carven walls at first, down staircases at first. But she kept leading him down, down, down, until they were no longer in Menegroth at all, until their surroundings were bare cave and the only light glowed from the flame burning beneath Melian’s veneer of flesh.

Never looking behind her, Melian at last led Maeglin down a steep, narrow tunnel. The walls were smooth and uneven—this passage was eroded into the rock, then, rather than carved, damp to the touch and warm. For a moment, when he pressed his hand flat against it, it yielded to his touch, no longer stone but something soft and wet and spongy, but light flared before him, and it was stone again.

There were no stairs cut into the earth here; there was only a slope, steep and rough, that forced Maeglin to choose carefully where he walked, lest he trip and fall. That throbbing in the earth was stronger here, that hard, steady thump that should have driven Maeglin to his knees, and yet somehow didn’t. The further down they went, the stronger it became. Maeglin caught himself looking over his shoulder, but there was nothing following them here. It was just them.

Or maybe it wasn’t _just_ them. Melian’s light occasionally illuminated the openings to lightless passageways. Where they led, Maeglin could not imagine—judging by the slope, they all led down, but he couldn’t guess any more than that. From most, he heard naught but silence, but after they had trekked downwards for what must have been half a mile, Maeglin stopped dead in his tracks, peering intently into one of the offshoots.

He heard singing. It seemed to come from very far off, and yet whispered in his ear as if the singers stood directly next to him. The language was the same as what he had heard when he first passed through the Girdle. The voices… He had never heard them before. He knew that. They were strangers to him. But there was a part of his mind normally locked away in the deepest recesses that claimed to know them. They were strangers, and yet old friends. Old friends, and…

“Maeglin.” Not until he heard his name called did Maeglin realize he had taken his first step down that passageway. When he turned, Melian shook her head and waved him back onto the path. “That place is not for you.” Her face was utterly mask-like, but a firm note only augmented her voice’s usual power. “Not yet.”

“But what _is_ that?” he asked, fighting back a shudder when he felt a compulsion leave him—and the old one take root again.

“A secret beyond your capacity to endure, as you are now.” She began to glide down the path again. “Now, follow.”

Maeglin thought they might walk until they reached the foundations of the earth and the utterly dark abyss below. But instead, they came at last to a cavern. Maeglin had no idea how far it stretched; Melian’s light only carried so far. But there were ‘stars’ glimmering here as there had been in the apartments he shared with his father, and they seemed to stretch on forever. Nightingales sang softly; the white faces of ghost owls flickered in and out of view, their wingbeats disturbing the otherwise deathly still air. Maeglin could hear drops of water dripping to the ground, echoing eerily on the vast walls.

Before him, he saw the stars reflected on the ground. As they drew closer, Melian’s light illuminated a pool with a diameter of maybe seven feet, perfectly round, the stony lip sloping off gently. The water was as a mirror, reflecting the stars and, when he drew close, Maeglin’s face, with perfect clarity.

“Sit,” Melian told him, “on the opposite side of the pool from myself. We will begin now.” She swept to the ground, but she seemed more to float an inch or so above the ground, rather than touch flesh and cloth with the earth.

With significantly less grace, Maeglin sat down, cold, wet grit embedding itself into his palms. The throbbing in the earth seemed stronger here than ever before, but the surface of the water did not tremble, the birds seemed undisturbed, and the ground did not shake. He tried to ignore it. Sitting, he found the height difference between himself and Melian even more pronounced than it had been before. Even sitting a distance away from her, he had to crane his neck to look up into her face. Tendrils of white-gold light stretched out from her form, swaying gently in the dark. When she said nothing more, he asked, raking his gritty palms with his fingernails, “What is this place?” A chorus of echoes, each fainter than the last, repeated the question, until it drifted away into silence.

“This is the heart of Menegroth.” The light in Melian’s eyes grew ever more intense, until it was as staring into Anor, the few times Maeglin had ever caught a hint of its light—terrible and unbearable, burning and too-piercing, but still, he could not look away. When he blinked, he found the light of her eyes burned into his eyelids. “This is an old place, as old as Arda itself. It is a place of great power, one whose power I call upon to aid me when I replenish the barriers I put in place to safeguard this land.”

At that, Maeglin stared blankly up at her, unsure of how to respond. _She_ needed something to aid her in her magic? He could hardly imagine what power there was west of the Sea, short of the Enemy who dwelled in the far north, who could assail her.

But Melian nodded, as though he had spoken the words aloud. “Even the powers of the Ainur are not inexhaustible, Maeglin. I have my limits, and I need a central place from which to cast my Girdle. The power of this cave greatly augments my own.” She narrowed her eyes slightly. “Though I’ve not yet been able to confirm as much, I suspect that it might be sufficient to allow a child of the Eldar to cast the enchantments needed to erect a similar, if less powerful barrier.”

Maeglin said nothing, but a cold chill crawled up his spine.

“There are few among the children of the Eldar who could utilize the power of this cave,” Melian went on. “I have encountered some whom I believe could replace me if I was ever to leave this place. Daeron the minstrel. Galadriel. Nimloth. Only a handful, but still, there are those who could take my place.”

“Daeron, and Galadriel, and Nimloth.” Maeglin rolled the words on his tongue, his mouth quirked in a frown. “Not Lúthien?”

For the first time, he caught a flicker of emotion, true emotion and not some practiced gesture meant to put him at his ease, cross her face. It was a shadow, a dimming of the light that burned within her. She pursed her lips and, for once, it was she who looked away, rather than him. “No,” Melian said shortly. “Not Lúthien.”

Something about the shadow that had passed over her face made her marginally less daunting. It had not diminished her—Maeglin could not conceive of anything that _could_ —but it made it easier to speak to her. “My Queen, what does this have to do with me?” More insistently, he asked, “Why have you brought me here?”

He could guess. It was like some seed of winter had taken root in his heart and began growing ice in his blood, but he could guess. He needed her to _say_ it.

She regarded him in considering silence. A nightingale swooped down out of the darkness and perched on one of the branches woven into her hair, ruffling its feathers as it preened. “You have seen something few others have seen. _Very_ few others. This is the heart of Menegroth, but the heart is the vital organ of a body, not its whole.” She reached towards the pool that lied between them, and dipped a single finger into the water, before drawing her hand away. The surface of the water rippled; the stars winked and shivered. “You came here with questions, though you might not give them a voice. Look into the water, and find them answered.”

Maeglin eyed her dubiously—she was offering him an answer, but why did this feel like he would not profit from it at all? She gazed steadily back at him, unwavering and implacable. Maeglin drew a deep breath, and stared down into the pool.

For several moments, he saw nothing that he had not seen before. He saw smooth, dark water, the surface as a mirror, and… and no stars. Maeglin cast a short look up at the ceiling, and sure enough, the stars still glimmered above, but he saw no sign of them reflected in the water now.

Then, he saw something else instead.

Later, Maeglin would never be able to fully describe what he saw. His capacities were insufficient to fully describe or even process what he had been shown. It was…

It was as if he was everywhere within Doriath’s borders, all at once. He could see… No, it was not seeing, it was _being_ every tree, every rock, every blade of grass, every drop of water that flowed within every river that lied within Doriath’s borders. And not just the inanimate among the living, but the animate…

When he found himself a part of the animate, what was already bordering on overwhelming took a turn for the worst.

All those minds, the innumerable legion. Primitive and limited the minds of birds and hares and boars and ants and all the other animals of Doriath might have been, they still had thoughts of their own. If Maeglin had found his mind meshed with but one, he could have kept his own thoughts separate, could have readily discerned his own thoughts from theirs. But it wasn’t _just_ one; it was all of them together, all at once, pressing down, tearing his own thoughts apart.

And then he found himself a part of the Edhil of Doriath. At which point, all rational thought fled.

All Maeglin could remember from that part of the vision—a vision it must have been; he could think of nothing else it could have been—was the singing. More song in the language he had heard when he entered the Girdle, when he had looked into that forbidden passageway. As ever, he understood none of it. But once more, he had the sense he knew the singers, knew the song. The song resonated with his scattered mind as would have the first lullaby his mother sang over his cradle. It was utterly beyond description.

“Maeglin.”

And then he was back in the cave again. Melian had come to kneel at his side, both of her hands planted on his shoulders. He was enveloped in her light, enfolded in the billowing sleeves of her robes, and for a moment, Maeglin could almost believe he was safe there.

But the moment passed and Maeglin jerked himself out of her half-embrace, and remembered bitterly how much more sheltering darkness could be.

“You!” he gasped, as uncaring of formality as he was of the sting in his palms when he fell heavily on the grit and rocks beneath him. “Why did you show me that?”

He knew, he knew, he _knew_. The knowledge was coiled like the chains of dungeon manacles around his heart. Now she had but to say it.

Melian drew to her feet, far more quickly and fluidly than an Edhel could have managed. “There will come a day when I am…” She paused, and though she did not frown, there was a frown in her voice when she went on, “no longer here. When that day comes, there must be one among the Iathrim who has the capacity to replace me, and defend the borders of Doriath from our Enemy.”

It wasn’t… It wasn’t a shock, not exactly. Maeglin had guessed what she was after when she explained to him what this place was. The words still sank into his flesh, every one of them a talon of ice. “I… You…”

Her face, as she looked down upon him, was how Maeglin imagined the Doomsman must look down upon the spirits of the dead. Silent, considering, and utterly without anything that could be mistaken for pity. What use could one who was of the blood of the Rodyn have for pity, when it was to be wasted on the likes of him?

“All… all I have ever wanted is to be free,” Maeglin forced out, his voice thick. “I want to be _free_. Please…” He dug his fingers into the grit. “… _Please_. I want to be free!”

That not even disappointment showed itself on Melian’s face was no comfort. If she had shown disappointment, if she had shown him anything like the shadow that had earlier passed over her face, if she had shown _emotion_ , it would have been easier to bear. Easier to believe that this had had some meaning if she showed herself crestfallen that he’d not given her the answer she wanted.

No, no disappointment. No anything. She glided to the entrance to the cave, pausing only there to see if he followed.

As when he had followed her here, he had no choice but to follow.

-0-0-0-

It had been impossible to guess the amount of time he had spent following Melian down to the cave. Similarly, it was impossible to guess just how long he spent following her back to Menegroth proper, but the journey seemed to carry on forever. Maeglin’s legs were stiff and weary; he devoted himself to picking the grit out of his palms, wincing at how tender he found his skin when it was clean again. He didn’t dare speak to the queen.

He wondered dully if his father might think to ask what Melian had wanted with him, now that he had had his audience with the Queen of Doriath. How he could possibly describe any of this to him, he had no idea. How Eöl would respond to the idea of Maeglin living in Menegroth on a permanent basis, he knew all too well. Perhaps Eöl would believe him if he said that Melian had instructed him to tell no one of what they had discussed. Since she’d forbidden Eöl to follow them down into the cave, perhaps he would believe it.

When they returned to Menegroth, Melian left him. She said nothing, no words of farewell, no rebuke or comfort. She simply looked back at him and nodded slightly before disappearing down one of the many corridors, leaving him alone.

Maeglin stared helplessly at the three-pronged fork of hallways that stretched out before him, trying and failing to remember just which one he had followed Melian down earlier that morning. At least, he thought it was still morning. The light that flared in the torches was golden rather than dim blue, and there were a few Edhil traipsing down each of the corridors, but none of them paid Maeglin any mind, as if he was completely invisible.

He began wandering aimlessly down the corridors, straining his eyes for anything that looked familiar to him. There was a sameness to the tile patterns and the carvings on the walls that left him at a loss. That none of the Edhil seemed even to notice him, let alone take stock of the state of his clothes, wet and dotted with grit as they were was no comfort. Still, he had to find a way back. He trailed his hand along the wall; his fingers were caught in the mouth of a lynx, but when Maeglin wrenched his hand away, there was no blood, only the faintest of indentations in pale flesh.

This place. This place… Aredhel had thought this place integral in securing deliverance for them both, but if she knew, if she only _knew_ …

He was, as ever, invisible to the Edhil, as if the act of stepping into the heart of Menegroth had made him part of its body, and rendered him beneath notice. He had looked into their minds earlier, all of them at once. He had been them, his mind shattered into countless pieces, the shards implanted in their own waking minds. Had they felt something in that moment? Had they felt the foreign touch of another mind on theirs, had they shuddered at the intrusion, even if they knew not what had come to them? Or had they persisted in ignorance, blissfully unaware of what was taking place far below their feet?

Had Eöl felt it? Had he recognized the touch of his son’s mind, even only a shard of it, on his own? How would Maeglin ever _explain_ that? How could he explain away the intrusion, escape the ire that would surely follow from it, if his father had only _felt_ —

“Maeglin?”

There was a hand on his shoulder, lightly shaking him. Another voice, this one deeper, asked, “Is he hurt? He’s acting as though…”

Maeglin’s eyes came into sharp focus upon Finduilas and Nimloth standing close by him, both wearing frowns of light concern. Upon realizing that both were so close by, he jerked to attention, standing straight as he could without making his spine creak. He’d scrambled a little; Nimloth was biting back a laugh when he looked them in the face, though mercifully, Finduilas only smiled.

Not so long ago, a shard of his mind had touched theirs. Though he could not recall what he had seen or felt then, he had perceived their thoughts and seen the world through their eyes. Had they sensed the intrusion? Had Nimloth? Maeglin’s face burned. Had _Finduilas?_

And something else struck him, like the first tremor before an earthquake. He had looked into the minds of the Edhil of Doriath, had been them, if only for a moment. Had they been him as well? Had the connection worked both ways? When he had looked into their minds, had they looked into his as well? Had they seen what he struggled so to keep hidden?

Perhaps he was not beneath notice so much as he was being shunned.

He was not being shunned by Finduilas or Nimloth, however, who were both practically radiating concern by now—how long had he been silent? Maeglin drummed up his voice, praying he could keep from squeaking like an adolescent boy. “Forgive me,” he murmured; well, more of a croak, really. “I’ve just been to see the queen.”

Finduilas nodded, looking just a little confused. Behind her, Nimloth sobered completely, and did not look confused at all. “A private audience with the queen can be overwhelming,” the latter remarked. “You have my sympathy.”

At that, Finduilas looked at both of them in turn, her mouth twisting. She tilted her head slightly and asked, “I get the impression that there is something going on here that I don’t know about.”

Before Maeglin could say anything, Nimloth smiled and shook her head. “There is, Finduilas, but we cannot speak of it. It’s not for the likes of us to speculate on the doings of the queen.”

Maeglin shivered.

“So it would seem.” Finduilas tucked her arm in the crook of Maeglin’s elbow and began leading him down the corridor. She smiled gently up at him. “Come with me. I think I remember where your rooms are.”

It was a struggle not to lean on her, for rather different reasons than it was a struggle not to lean against his father. It was easy, though, to let her and Nimloth guide him back towards the apartments he shared with his father. No one spoke, and it became easier to walk without weariness the longer she led him on.

Part of him was glad that Nimloth and Finduilas had found him together. Perhaps the former could answer some of the _many_ questions he still had after his audience with Melian—both the preexisting questions, and the ones that had been birthed in that cave—or help him make the slightest bit of sense of what he had seen. But part of him squirmed with resentment at the fact that Finduilas had not been alone. It was well-nigh impossible to be alone with any of the Edhil of Menegroth, but the idea that he could have been alone with her, had only Nimloth not accompanied her…

Resentment shriveled up into shame. Maeglin was grateful for the locks on the doors and the shutters and bars on the windows of his mind.

All too soon, they reached the door of Maeglin’s lodgings. Walking so close by him, Finduilas had provided a warmth whose lack Maeglin felt keenly when she stepped away from him. “I will see you at supper tonight.” Her eyes glimmered with something that Maeglin didn’t dare name. “Whatever happened to you when you spoke with the queen, try not to let it affect you too badly. I’m certain it wasn’t anything she would wish you to be distressed about.”

She did not know the truth, but Maeglin saw no harm in letting her keep her ignorance. He did not think she would have thanked him in the moment of enlightenment.

Finduilas strode away down the corridor, but when Maeglin caught Nimloth’s billowing sleeve in his hand, she paused and turned to face him. She wore today a collar of glossy black feathers, whose metallic sheen betrayed their identity as starlings’ feathers. “I can only guess at all the questions you must have,” she said with a knowing gleam in her eyes, once Finduilas was out of earshot. “For all that Melian the Queen is one of the Wise, she is not always proficient at explaining things in terms an Úmanya can understand.” Her eyebrows shot up. “Though I wonder if the Amanyar would do any better.”

He had questions, though the ones Nimloth had alluded to were not the ones beating on the interior walls of his skull.

“The queen said,” he started, only to find himself trapped on a single word. Maeglin drew a breath, and tried again, “The queen said that she had brought you to that place before.”

Melian had _not_ said that, not in so many words. It had gone implied, though, and that was what Maeglin was counting on.

Nimloth’s eyes flickered. “She did, indeed. I was barely grown, and my parents knew naught of it, but yes, she took me to that place.”

A light like the Flame Imperishable descending into the darkness, and a gleam of silver following after it—Maeglin could see it in his mind’s eye, as clearly as if it was playing out before him. (He caught himself wondering if any of the Edhil Melian took down into the cave had just… never come back up. Vanished. But such thoughts were unworthy of him and the queen both, so he put them away.) “How…” Maeglin stared into Nimloth’s face, searching desperately for any strain of trouble. “…How did it feel to you…” The memory of his mind splintering and flying, uprooted from his body, to every corner of Doriath, washed over him again like a plunge into the Celon in midwinter. “How did it feel to you, when she made you see…”

Nimloth’s eyes glazed over, but when her mouth curved, it was in a wondering smile, rather than anything that could be termed fear or aversion. “It was wonderful,” she said dreamily, her voice pitching low. “I had never felt anything like it before.” Maeglin eyed her in disbelief, and she exclaimed indignantly, “It’s true! I had never understood how limiting it is to live my life seeing the world through only my own eyes. It was so freeing to see the world from so many perspectives.” She ran her fingernail along the tip of one of the feathers attached to the collar of her dress. “The queen has never invited me to return to that cave with her, but I she ever made the offer, I would gladly accept.”

Freeing. It hadn’t made her feel as though her mind was shatter irrevocably, beyond all hope of repair. It hadn’t made her feel so terribly small against the backdrop of the world, so small that even the foot of an ant could crush her.

Maeglin nodded, and turned away from her without a word.

Of course she would think it freeing. Of course she would readily accept if Melian ever offered to make her see again. She was a child of Menegroth, born and brought up within its rabbit warren of halls and passageways. She could not see; she was too close the organism to see it for what it was.

 _This is no place for me_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary of Terms:
> 
>  **Amanyar** —‘Those of Aman’ (Quenya) (singular: Amanya—probably) (adjectival form: Amanyarin); those Elves who made the journey to Aman, or were born there.  
>  **Anor** —the Sindarin name for the Sun  
>  **Celon** —a slender tributary of Aros that had its origins in the hills around Himring, and flowed southwest until it emptied into Aros. It was the western border of Nan Elmoth, and also served as the boundary between Himlad and Estolad.  
>  **Edhel** — Elf (plural: Edhil) (Sindarin)  
>  **Eldar** —‘People of the Stars’ (Quenya); a name first given to the Elves by Oromë when he found them by Cuiviénen, but later came to refer only to those who answered the summons to Aman and set out on the March, with those who chose to remain by Cuiviénen coming to be known as the Avari; the Eldar were composed of these groups: the Vanyar, Ñoldor (those among them who chose to go to Aman), and the Teleri (including their divisions: the Lindar, Falmari, Sindar and Nandor).  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath  
>  **Rodyn** — Valar (singular: Rodon) (Sindarin): a common Sindarin name for the Valar  
>  **Úmanya** —'Those not of Aman' (singular: Úmanya—probably) (adjectival form: Úmanyarin); those Elves who did not make the journey to Aman, and/or were not born there.


	6. Chapter Six

Maeglin walked back into the apartments, carefully pulling the door shut behind him. With any luck, Eöl would be in his own rooms, and Maeglin would be able to slip by him into the wash room (And hopefully, Eöl hadn’t caught any of the conversation taking place outside of the door). After everything else that had happened, it seemed to Maeglin that he should at least be able to take a bath without having to submit to an interrogation first.

Not to be. As soon as Maeglin pulled the door shut, however quietly he might have done it, it wasn’t enough—as soon as Maeglin pulled the door shut, another opened, and out stepped Eöl. Eöl eyed the state of Maeglin’s clothes with deep suspicion, his mouth pulled back in something between a frown and a snarling scowl. “Where have you been?”

If Eöl was for the moment ruled by suspicion, Maeglin was ruled by the unhappy marriage of disbelief and exasperation. “With the queen,” he replied, and though he could keep his voice even, he could not keep the edge in his voice from surfacing. Had she not said that it wasn’t for him to accompany them? Not implied that it wasn’t for him to know where they were going?

To say that Eöl was appeased by this answer would have been less than honest; the suspicion etched into his face decreased, but only marginally. “And where did she take you?” he half-asked, half-demanded, his eyes fixed once again on the grit coating Maeglin’s elbows and knees.

“I cannot say.” _This_ time, he could keep the edge out of his voice, though the result was that Maeglin’s voice thrummed with tension. “What happened was between us. It is not for the likes of us to discuss the deeds of the queen.”

That Eöl nodded at, while still looking less than happy, made Maeglin wonder for the first time just how high esteem Eöl really held Melian in. He was adamant that she was not to be gainsaid, and he had always seemed to approve of the enchantments she had set at the borders of Doriath—at least he thought highly enough of them to adapt those enchantments for his own use in securing the borders of Nan Elmoth. But for all the time he had been alive, Maeglin could not recall Eöl ever revealing something that could be termed an opinion on the queen herself. He was always close-mouthed on the subject of Melian the Queen, never volunteering any information beyond the most basic, impersonal. Not too different from how he normally acted, to be fair, but in this case…

He was the same way about Menegroth, too.

Maeglin turned to face his father, who had gone to sit at the table in the antechamber. “Father?” he asked, more hesitantly than he would have liked. “What… do you think of the queen?”

Eöl looked at him out of the corner of his eye. “It is not for the likes of us to speak thusly of the queen in the queen’s own domains.”

It was meant as a jibe; Maeglin knew that much, logically. But a wave of cold washed over him that had nothing to do with Eöl’s displeasure. He had suddenly the impression of being watched; his skin prickled, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.

She could be watching. At any time, anywhere within the borders of Doriath, Melian could be watching _everything_. She could have seen him eating and sleeping and bathing, could have seen him wander out of doors during the night, trying to find Galadriel’s apartments, could have seen him standing bored while his father visited with old colleagues, could have seen him making a fool out of himself in front of Finduilas.

Something else occurred to him, and Maeglin felt even colder. Had she seen the letter? Had she seen what it said? Just how deeply could she reach into others’ minds when she was ensconced in the heart of Menegroth? Maeglin himself had been able to enter the minds of the other Edhil; surely one of the blood of the Rodyn would be able to do all that and more. Had she seen what was in his heart, forbidden language and dark thoughts and strains of bitterness and doubt?

Could she see this in his heart? In everyone’s?

“Father?” Maeglin thought his voice sounded like he had been struck in the throat, hoarse and croaking. “Why did you leave Menegroth to live in Nan Elmoth?”

He wasn’t sure what he was hoping for. If his father had seen the same things he had, felt the same things he had, what difference would it make, really? What had passed between them had still passed between them. There was nothing it could change, but he just needed to know.

Eöl looked him over in silence, still as a statue for several moments. His face gave away nothing; his eyes gave away nothing. His mind was shut, and if Maeglin had attempted to touch on it, Eöl would have felt the intrusion and ended the conversation then and there. At length, Eöl sighed and said quietly, his eyes fixed on Maeglin’s face, “I left before the Daystar was hung in the sky to harry us. As for reasons, I had reasons.

“With Ithil in the sky, there was little in the way of reliable darkness to be found in any of the forests of Doriath, even among the beech trees of Neldoreth.” His eyes darkened. “The queen’s enchantments might protect Doriath’s borders, but there is still wisdom in staying well away from the light, where you can be seen by spies high in the air. The trees of Nan Elmoth are taller and the forest thicker than anywhere else east of the Ered Luin, and was also closer to Nogrod and Belegost; it was suitable to my needs.”

“There was something else,” Maeglin murmured, half guess and half prayer. His pulse raced.

Eöl nodded. “Yes, there was something else.” His mouth quirked downwards in a frustrated frown. “As the dangers in wide Beleriand grew greater, Doriath—Menegroth in particular, but the forests as well—grew more and more crowded. It got to be that you couldn’t find solitude anywhere; there was always someone within a mile of you, no matter where you went. The settlements are more concentrated in these days; you’re less likely to find homesteads scattered all throughout the forests. However, there is still less solitude than I would have liked. Nan Elmoth has a…” he paused and raised his eyebrow. “…A particular reputation. There are very few who like the idea of settling there. I knew I could find solitude there if that was where I settled.”

He fell into silence, acting as though Maeglin had dissolved into nothingness before him.

That was all?

Maeglin’s stomach churned. He turned towards the wash room, suddenly desperate for solitude himself. As he neared the door, his father called out, “Maeglin?” Maeglin turned his head, just enough to look at Eöl out of one eye. “I’ve no appointments today. We’ll be staying here today until supper.”

Maeglin nodded choppily, and headed swiftly into the wash room.

They were staying here today. They were going nowhere today. He stuffed his fist into his mouth to keep silent, biting down hard on his knuckles. A scream was beginning to build in his chest; if it came out and was heard, that would only make matters worse.

This was the last day. It was the last whole day he would spend in Menegroth. It was the last day he had to find a way to pass Aredhel’s letter off to her cousin, and now, Maeglin found himself robbed of any chance to slip away before the feasting, of any chance to track her down while out from under his father’s scrutiny. Admittedly, there was only the slightest chance that Eöl would go somewhere and leave Maeglin alone here, only the slightest chance that Maeglin would be able to slip away while he and his father were abroad in the city together. But it was still more likely than Eöl becoming so distracted while the feasting and dancing was going on that Maeglin could pass the letter along right under his nose.

Wincing at the indentations in his knuckles, Maeglin took his hand slowly from his mouth. He squeezed his eyes shut and took a long, deep breath.

He would have to try. Perhaps if he caught her while they were at the furthest point from the high table, or perhaps where the crowd was at its thickest. And perhaps even that wouldn’t be enough, and he would have to think up a lie to tell his father, as unlikely as it was that Eöl would be deceived by any lie Maeglin told him in such a situation. But he would have to try again tonight. It was the last chance. If he failed, there might not be another chance.

-0-0-0-

There seemed to be no one in all of Menegroth who shared Maeglin’s trepidation; they certainly weren’t feeling it in the same _form_. This being the last day of the festival, the evening’s feast was even more expansive than the past two nights’ had been. The tables groaned under the weight of dozens of platters and pitchers and tureens, while aromas that under other circumstances would have been enticing wafted up. Maeglin eyed the platters and pitchers and tureens in all their glory, but only put enough food on his plate to avoid drawing attention to himself. He could find little capacity for appetite with how his stomach churned, and though he could taste his food, the taste seemed to come from far away, distant and vague and unsatisfying.

Galadriel had been here both of the previous nights, had taken part in the feasting and the dancing just the same as the other members of the royal court. Surely she would be here tonight as well. Maeglin turned his attention to the far right, and began searching up and down the table for her.

He quickly spotted Daeron and Mablung, and with them some of the other marchwardens who had been invited into Menegroth to take part in the festivities. He spied Galathil and Galadhon sitting together, and Thínloth and Nimloth sitting together close by. There was Finduilas, and Oropher, and Finduilas’s horrible grandmother. Thingol, Melian, and Lúthien were all unmistakable (Maeglin quickly averted his eyes from Melian, the better to avoid falling under her scrutiny. After this morning, he didn’t think he could bear that). There were many other faces, besides; virtually all of the royal court was in attendance.

But the more Maeglin searched the room, the more his heart began to hammer, the little food he’d eaten turning to ash. No matter where he looked, he saw no sign of Galadriel. At the far edges of the tables, up near where the king and queen sat, there was no sign of her. Neither was there any sign of her husband; Maeglin scanned the room for a sight of Celeborn, and found nothing.

Perhaps they were just late, Maeglin tried to reassure himself, but the feast had been going on for a while, and he could already feel his resolve breaking into desperation—how likely was it, really, that they were just tardy, and would come walking in through the doors at any moment? He stared down at his plate, his gorge rising in his throat. All of a sudden, the room felt hot as a furnace, the golden lamps like bonfires spread out all throughout the room. All that was missing was the smoke that would choke him, and render moot any question of escape.

The feast seemed to drag on forever, as if the platters were replenishing themselves when Maeglin wasn’t looking. No one made comment on the changes Maeglin was sure had come over his face; he was once more invisible to the Edhil of Menegroth, whatever was going through his mind completely beneath their notice. He should have been grateful for it. Invisibility in such a way meant a smaller chance of exposure, a greater chance that his secrets would remain known to himself alone. But tonight it made him feel small, the troubles so vital to him insignificant, and whatever strength he had rendered void.

Someone hurried into the hall through a side door, skirting along the walls furtively. Maeglin paid them little heed at first, too wrapped up in his own troubles to really wonder who this was. When they headed straight for where Maeglin and Eöl were sitting, then Maeglin paid greater mind, staring at the Edhel and frowning.

The Edhel paid Maeglin even less mind than Maeglin had paid them when they first entered the hall. Instead, they leaned down and whispered something in Eöl’s ear, never even looking at Maeglin.

Whatever the Edhel had said to Eöl, the effect was immediate. He set his knife none-too-gently down on the table and abruptly stood, a frown creasing his mouth and his forehead. “Stay here,” he said hurriedly to Maeglin. “I’ll be back before the evening’s done.”

Maeglin watched them both hurry out that side door, his blood roaring in his ears.

He watched, and waited. The feast dragged on and on before petering out into dancing—one Edhel got up from the table to take to the dance floor, then another, then another, then still more. The table was nearly empty when at last Maeglin stood up and joined the dancers. Instead of feeling invisible, when seated almost by himself at the high table, he felt acutely eyes upon him, picking apart his every thought and deed. Invisibility beckoned. Invisibility would be easier…

Eöl was not here. He was not here to watch every move Maeglin made, and watch closely for any sign that Maeglin sought to subvert his will. It should have been a gift. It should have been deliverance. What would have been a golden opportunity meant less than nothing when Galadriel wasn’t here, either. It was just… What was he to do now?

The press of the crowd was unbearable, even when Maeglin kept close to the walls. The feeling of eyes upon him did not abate, even down on the dance floor. It came from the walls, now, and it was no less unsettling when Maeglin knew _why_. Knowing the source gave no relief; it was just another thing to trouble him.

Maeglin left the hall and went out into the dark hallway outside, sitting down on a cold stone bench out of the light. The darkness yielded up no pulse, no lamps that flickered and flared as one, no blustering wind roaring through the passageways. Behind him, Menegroth was asleep, but that was no comfort. He hugged his sides and drew sharp, whistling breaths through gritted teeth, his mind feeling as though it would fly apart at any moment.

The specter of his future and his mother’s both loomed before him, sinking its claws into his shoulders, whispering in his ears. Already, it felt more present, more real to him than what was going on before him in the feasting hall.

It wasn’t just Aredhel’s reaction when he came home to tell her that he had failed, failed her and failed them both. The idea of her disappointment, her quiet frustration and quieter despair stung like a dart, but it was but a mild pain compared to the idea of everything else.

It could be a few years before they had another opportunity to secure escape. It could be a decade. It could be twenty years, or fifty, or a hundred. Or it could be never. It could be that this was the last chance Maeglin and Aredhel would ever have to escape Nan Elmoth. It could be that because Maeglin had held to caution before now, he had lost any chance he and his mother would ever have of being free of Nan Elmoth, free of Eöl, _free_ to go where they wished, to see their family and be known to them, to live under the open sky, to speak the tongue Aredhel had taught him in hidden places, to look up at the sky and see _light_.

He could be trapped for the rest of time in that forest, penned in by fences of trees and bushes and enchantments that would drag him back under the shadowy eaves if ever he tried to escape. He could wander forever in shadow, not lost as his mother was, but lost in a maze whose nature he understood, and yet could not thwart. Trapped under his father’s suspicious eye forever, like a fly trapped under a bell jar, and if he pressed the boundaries too far…

No.

No, he couldn’t. He couldn’t bear it, there had to be something else he could do.

With difficulty, Maeglin began to collect himself. He craned his neck to stare behind him into the shadows of Menegroth late at night. There was no way to know just when Eöl would return, but he had been gone for long enough that perhaps whatever he’d been asked to attend to would keep him for the rest of the night. Perhaps Maeglin had enough time to slip away and try to find Galadriel’s apartments. It was a risk, but unfortunately, it also happened to be the only chance Maeglin had left. If Eöl returned to find Maeglin gone and went looking for him, he supposed he could say he’d gotten lost on the way back to their lodgings. A flimsy lie, but better than nothing.

 _Fine._ Maeglin sucked in a shuddering breath. _I… I can do that. There isn’t any use sitting here in a panic. I can do that. I can do_ something _. I just have to try._

 _I have to try_.

He stood, with some difficulty—the bones in his legs felt as though they were made of water. It was as simple as walking back into the hall and asking someone if they knew where Galadriel’s apartments were, if there was any kind of identifying mark on the walls nearby that he could use to discern her door from the other featureless doors in Menegroth. No, it wasn’t that simple; it was a matter of finding someone to ask who he was reasonably sure wouldn’t report his questions and his comings and goings to his father.

That was still simple.

Wasn’t it?

Maeglin stared into the hall, rooted to the spot.

He wasn’t sure how long he stood like that, mute and paralyzed, all his courage fled in the face of a kinship that left him so vulnerable to exposure. When Finduilas detached herself from the crowd, the light behind her turning her hair and clothing to fiery gold, Maeglin could say nothing. Relief at the sight of her warred with pervasive unease, with shame that she had found him in such a state. She smiled at him, her head tilted slightly, the gold chains connecting her earrings sparkling like a cluster of stars. Weakly, Maeglin smiled back—he could think of nothing else to do.

“I think they may be rowdier tonight than they were the first,” Finduilas remarked. “The wine flowed more freely tonight than the last two.”

“I… hadn’t noticed,” Maeglin said. His voice sounded slightly strangled. “…Forgive me.”

A moment longer, she regarded him, before sitting down on the bench that Maeglin had earlier vacated. Finduilas stared expectantly up at him, patting the empty space beside her. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to sit down beside her, even if it meant moving back from what he knew he needed to do.

“Nargothrond is beautiful this time of year,” Finduilas said softly, her eyes locked dead ahead, back into the hall. “And the surrounding lands.”

Nargothrond. One of many kingdoms Maeglin had never seen, might never see now. Something inside of him, the part of him that screamed always for freedom and travel, felt like it was dying. Not all at once—by inches, the way a leaf withered and died on a tree in autumn, turning brown at the edges before decay found the rest of it. “What… is it like?” he found himself asking, longing for the answer and dreading it at the same time. What use was it to ask such things when he had so little hope of ever experiencing it for himself, when the answers would serve only to torment?

Finduilas guessed at none of what went on inside his mind. Her eyes glazed over in reminiscence, her face slackening. “The waters of the river are still too cold to swim in, but it sings with a voice not dimmed with cold and darkness. New grass shoots up between the dead stalks, the trees are crowned with white blossoms, and there are hills near the capital turned pink by veils of anemones.” She smiled slightly. “I don’t ride that often, but the weather is wonderful for it. Anor serves the world well. I would be there now, but I had…” she paused, her smile fading to a small frown. “… _Errands_ in Menegroth.”

“The city, Princess.” It might make him split in half, but he could not stem his curiosity now. “What is the city like?”

“Oh, much like Menegroth in some respects. But in others, it is quite different.”

She wove a tale for him whose every syllable he hung off of, aching for more. It was as if he was a child again, listening to his mother’s tales of Tirion and the Hidden City, but he had never felt the cutting hunger of desperation so keenly then as he did now, never felt as though he might scream or weep or fall to the ground.

The city of Nargothrond was, in many respects, similar to Menegroth. It was a city carved from a cave system that sat on the banks of a river. There had already been a city of sorts carved from the stone, but Finduilas had no idea what had happened to the previous inhabitants, and she remarked that her uncle Finrod had always been unclear on that subject. “The Hadhodrim enlarged the city, just as they fashioned the city of Menegroth from the living rock.”

“The _Hadhodrim_ fashioned Menegroth?” Maeglin asked sharply. “This bears little resemblance to the architecture of Nogrod _or_ Belegost.”

But Finduilas shrugged. “I can only assume that the king gave them very specific instructions. As far as architecture is concerned, Nargothrond bears only a middling resemblance to Menegroth; perhaps the stonemasons were allowed to fashion Nargothrond to bear a closer resemblance to their own home?”

She went on, far-away and dreamy, and it was a relief to Maeglin, to be drawn into the dream as well. The vaulted ceilings of the great hall, hung with lanterns and chandeliers, surfaced in his mind’s eye; he saw the dais and the throne, the tapestries and the statues of Edhil so lifelike that you could almost imagine that they would spring off their pedestals and converse with the living. “One of our sculptors was a student of Nerdanel the Wise in the Undying Lands; Nerdanel imparted much of her knowledge and skill on her apprentice.”

The open courtyards boasted fountains and sculptures; of the latter, some wore shapes that could be found in the world, while others were fantastical. The fountains and sculptures glittered with precious stones, as if someone had taken the stars from the sky and set them in cold stone. There were even jewels sewn into the many tapestries of Nargothrond; the king loved the look of precious stones, and so delighted in the sight of them that the greater part of the craftsmen were eager to please him.

Nargothrond was smaller than Menegroth, and had only three great market squares, but they were no less impressive than the market squares of Menegroth. On any given day, there would be a great host of merchants and their stalls set up in the square, in addition to the shops that were a permanent fixture there, carved into the walls and glittering with lamp light. Given that Nargothrond’s location was meant to remain secret, the city did not enjoy as much trade with the outside world as did, say, Círdan’s cities of Eglarest and Brithombar, or Barad Eithel or Himring or Thargelion. Still, King Finrod sent merchants high and low in all directions, some traveling as far south as Edhellond searching for wares—and Maeglin wished he knew more of the world, so that more of the names she mentioned to him might actually mean something to him.

On any given day, the market squares would be awash with vibrant colors and eager chatter and clinks and clicking footsteps. Someone might be giving a demonstration of how to mix dye, but the acrid smell of the ingredients would be drowned out by sweet perfume and the enticing aromas of meat cooking and tea being prepared. Old friends would see each other for the first time in months or years and cry out, exclaiming over how they had cut their hair or acquired a new piercing or tattoo. They would demand to know where their friend had been in their travels, and Finduilas would listen to them tell tales of far-distant lands, some fantastical beyond belief. The merchant who had journeyed all the way to the Gates of Morning sprang to mind—“I’d love to be there, to watch Anor come up from the dark waters,” she murmured, a dreamy smile coming over her face.

Maeglin had to look away. “So would I,” he muttered.

Finduilas’s smile grew as she described the terraces in Nargothrond, overflowing with flowers and bushes and vines—some even were home to small trees. Some of the Exiles who, in the time of the Darkening, had determined ways to make plants grow in the dark had joined Finrod’s host, and had followed him to Nargothrond. Their craft made it possible for plants to grow even in places far from any sunlight.

Nargothrond was alive as Menegroth, if in a different way. The stone was inert, not dead but never alive to begin with, whereas the stone of Menegroth _breathed_. There was no plant that grew in Menegroth, within its stony shell; the stone might live, but the plants had to be fashioned from metal and precious gems, for either it was not in Melian’s power to make plants live away from the sunlight, or she did not care to try. And the means by which the plants were made to grow away from daylight in Nargothrond was something that Finduilas could actually _explain_ to Maeglin; he doubted that the Edhil of Menegroth could ever explain to him why the stone _breathed_ , for not only were most unaware of it, but the workings were something far beyond the ken of the Eldar, even the Mínil who learned at the feet of the Rodyn.

He could see it all as clearly as though he was there. He was seeing it through her eyes; Maeglin might not be touching upon Finduilas’s thoughts, but he could see the images shooting through her mind, could feel the affection coursing through her to remember her home. But they were just images. He had them, but he had never been there. It was like seeing an reflection of a reflection.

How much more wonderful would it be to be in Nargothrond, rather than being here? Somewhere nothing was beyond Maeglin’s ability to understand and explain, somewhere he wouldn’t feel as if he was being watched all the time? Somewhere he could be known to his kin, where he could know Finduilas out from under the eyes of Eöl or Melian the Queen? The idea of it was important to him, more important than he had earlier thought. Somewhere he could know her. He would have liked to have known her.

Something deep inside Maeglin hardened. His resolve, he hoped.

“Maeglin—“

“Finduilas.” His raw voice cracked, but it could not be enough to stop him. “Wait, please.” She stared at him, startled, but didn’t object. “I…” His hands didn’t want to move; the body still knew caution, even if the mind was trying to shake it off. “I…”

Finduilas nodded silently, gazing intently into his face.

“I need…” At last, Maeglin found it in him to take the letter from under his shirt. Crinkled and dog-eared, the ends of the white yarn used to tie it shut beginning to fray, it was a poor thing for his future to be hinged upon, no less than letters scratched in the dirt had been a poor way of transmitting the past. Finduilas’s eyes flickered briefly to the paper, and terror gripped Maeglin’s heart, but it was too late for vain terror, and he held the letter out to her. “This letter is from my mother,” he said faintly. The letter was shaking, he realized dimly; his hand was shaking, too. “I need you to give it to the Lady Galadriel.”

Finduilas eyed the outstretched letter with an unreadable look on her face. “Your mother,” she said softly. She shifted her weight on the bench, her thin skirts rustling, until she sat at an angle where half of her face was cast in sharp light, and half of it was shrouded in darkness. Her eyes caught the lamp light, almost Lachend-bright. “Maeglin.” She didn’t snap. She didn’t shout. She didn’t raise her voice in any way. But there was a firmness there that belied her soft tones. “Who is your mother?”

Maeglin froze. All the noise in the feasting hall abruptly dropped away, around the time his lungs ran dry of air. “Don’t tell my father.” The words tumbled out of his mouth, too fast and too loud. His voice rose higher still. “ _Please_ don’t tell my father! He can’t know about this, he can’t know—“

“I won’t!” As one, Maeglin and Finduilas both flinched, glancing into the hall to see if anyone had taken notice. When she was satisfied that no one was listening to him, Finduilas said, more quietly, “I won’t.” She took the letter and slid it up her sleeve, leaving it safely out of sight again. She pressed one hand to his shoulder, and curled the other gently around his jaw, her fingernails brushing against his skin. “I will help you, Maeglin,” she said earnestly. “I’m not going to tell your father anything.”

The words didn’t register at first. Maeglin was trapped in the sickness of fear, and the image of being betrayed to Eöl played out over and over in his mind, each rendition worse than the last. But at length, the loop ended. He nodded, and it was like she had taken a yoke from his shoulders. He gave a shuddering sigh, sagging slightly.

When Finduilas took her hand from his face, his skin where hers had touched it felt clammy for the absence. “Maeglin?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “I don’t suppose you have any idea _why_ Curufin stopped you and your father so often when the two of you passed through his lands?”

“I…” Maeglin frowned, blinking rapidly. “…No.”

Finduilas’s teeth showed in a conspiratorial smile. She leaned forwards, her bright hair spilling over her shoulders. “Curufin is well-known for his powers of discernment. He usually applies those powers in different ways, but in this case…” She paused, pursing her lips before going on, “Your mother. I have never met her. By Curufin, you bear an _uncanny_ resemblance to her.”

Maeglin gaped at her, thunderstruck. “He knew…”

“He didn’t _know_ ,” Finduilas corrected him. “He had suspicions. Suspicions he shared with my uncle Finrod—and my aunt, as it happens.”

Maeglin was silent, too stunned to speak.

“Írissë’s disappearance hardly went unremarked.” The use of Quenya jarred Maeglin out of amazement; he stiffened, eyes darting into the darkness. Finduilas grimaced and cleared her throat. “Forgive me, I… misspoke. Aredhel’s disappearance hardly went unremarked. Besides the High King, the rest of the House of Finwë watched long for any sign of her.” She smiled gently. “And then there was you.”

“And then there was me,” Maeglin repeated slowly, turning the words over and over in his mind.

“But we needed proof before we could proceed. So this—“ Finduilas slid her hand up her sleeve just long enough to show one of the tips of the letter “—is a fortunate turn.” She laughed ruefully. “I had been waiting for an opportune moment to speak to you about it, but until now, there were always too many people around us. It was impossible to conduct the conversation in privacy.”

It barely seemed real. They had lived cut off from the outside world for so long that it hardly seemed believable that those on the outside thought about them at all. To hear that they had still been searching after so much time had passed, it… There was still something that bore saying. “Whatever my mother has planned, it won’t be easy to carry out,” Maeglin warned her. He had never thought that escape would be as easy as stepping out onto the plains and never looking back, but it bore warning her anyways. “There is no guarantee of success.”

“Of course it won’t be easy.” She gripped his hand; her smile widened. “But that’s hardly any reason not to try.”

Maeglin nodded and smiled at her, his heart in his throat.

“Now—“ Finduilas rose swiftly from the bench and strode a few steps away “—we have a great deal of room here, and I thought you could still use some practice with the Iathrim forms. If you like, we can practice out here, where there’s no one to knock us down.” She held out her hand.

Unburdened by doubt for the first time in years, he took her outstretched hand and let her lead him on another dance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary of Terms:
> 
>  **Anor** —the Sindarin name for the Sun  
>  **Edhel** — Elf (plural: Edhil) (Sindarin)  
>  **Eldar** —‘People of the Stars’ (Quenya); a name first given to the Elves by Oromë when he found them by Cuiviénen, but later came to refer only to those who answered the summons to Aman and set out on the March, with those who chose to remain by Cuiviénen coming to be known as the Avari; the Eldar were composed of these groups: the Vanyar, Ñoldor (those among them who chose to go to Aman), and the Teleri (including their divisions: the Lindar, Falmari, Sindar and Nandor).  
>  **Ered Luin** —“The Blue Mountains” (Sindarin); the mountain range at the far western border of Eriador, that in the Years of the Trees and the First Age served as the border between Eriador and Beleriand. It was also known as the Ered Lindon, the Mountains of the Land of the Singers, Lindon being a name given to the region of the Ossiriand by the Ñoldor, derived from the Nandorin Lindānā.  
>  **Hadhodrim** — a Sindarin name for the Dwarves, ultimately adapted from the Khuzdul Khazâd (singular: Hadhod) (Sindarin)  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath  
>  **Ithil** —the Sindarin name for the Moon; of the Sun and the Moon, it is the elder of the two vessels, lit by Telperion’s last flower; in an early version of ‘Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor’ was said to be “the giver of visions” ( _The Lost Road_ 264). As this form is very similar to ‘Isil’, the Quenya form (which is likely to be its original form, as the vessel of the Moon was made in Aman), it is likely that ‘Ithil’ was adapted from ‘Isil’; all I can suppose is that the Valar got in contact with Melian at some point during the First Age to share information.  
>  **Lechind** —'Flame-eyed'; a name given to the Ñoldor by the Sindar, referring to the light of the Trees that shined in the eyes of those Ñoldor born in Aman during the Years of the Trees (singular: Lachend) (Sindarin)  
>  **Mínil** —the Sindarin variant of Quenya ‘Minyar’, the name the Vanyar applied to themselves (singular: Miniel) (Sindarin)  
>  **Rodyn** — Valar (singular: Rodon) (Sindarin): a common Sindarin name for the Valar


End file.
